Joined:
December 2001
Posts: 10581
Location: NJ | I originally sent this to Paul in a private e mail then thought about it and maybe someone else can shed some light onto it or clarify some of my facts. So if you know some of the facts are wrong just post a response
and btw if you send me an e mail please send it with a subject line most of the empty ones just get deleted.
I don;t know too much about the condor but this is what I can tell you. It is an early synth type unit that was made to sort of compete with the Guitarogan that was made in waco tx. the guitarorgan used import guitars like univox or others completely gutted them glued a logo on the headstock OVER The other company's logo and instlalled an elaborate fret system similar to the vox guitar organ.
The condor is an outboard unit that has a bunch of organ stop levers on it with corresponding sounds. I have owned MANY of these units but not one of the guitars. to use it you have to have a special bridge that has an early hex pickup and a speicial 8 pin connector cable. as far as I know the pickup was only used for archtop guitars since this was marketed as a band in a box device in fact the person I got several from was an old jazz guy who used it for solo gigs.
my general impressions. they are a little difficult to set up the pickups and have them work perfectly you must fret accurately they are glitchy noises big and bulky and have some useable sounds but many are not but aside from all this that is the charm of the unit.
as for the guitars it is my understanding that ovation supplied tornados to condor and they installed their bridge pickup system on them. I have seen some guitars that have the condor stylized C logo and others that say condor. I assume some of the guitars were imports ( I guess you can sorta say that about the tornados also.) but I have not seen one in person for a very long time.
I am not sure what that plastic piece was for on the end of the fingerboard but I am sure it served some purpose.
as I understand the guy that did the guitarogan from waco bought out all the hammond condor units or it was the other way around and wound up in florida. he also bought a ton of the old danelectro stock and was supposed to make the guitars using those bodies and necks but never really got it off the ground.
I own several condor units now and some spare circuit boards. they made a corresponding unit for woodwinds. (just like maestro) and that unit is popular with some jazz horn players but not as desireable as the guitar unit and the guitar unit has limited appeal. I think I have owned a totoal of about 10-12 of these thru the years. I have a demo cassette and the literature somewhere too
hope this shed some light on the subject
some of my information is hearsay and rumor |
Hammond Condor
