The JEI J72 console organ
Two manual, built-in 50 watt amplifier, late 1972 to 1975
Winter 1972. The organ pictured is said to be a J71 (three manual) but is in a fact a double manual J72.
The Jennings J72 organ was effectively a J70 double manual in console format, a 50 watt amplifier and 13-note pedal board built in, bench seat required. As the picture above indicates, the hope was to sell the J72 with a Pulsation unit - the Jennings version of the Vox Gyrotone. That Tom was emulating Vox on a broader level is clear not only from the fact that the latter had brought to market "home/club organ" versions of the Riviera 400 and Continental 300/301 in late 1971, but had display sets specially made up in white to exhibit at trade shows.
The J72 was first displayed in public at the Russell Hotel Trade Fair in late August 1972, and can be glimpsed in a photo of the Jennings stand. The J73, which was developed in tandem, came along a little later. The last sentence of the text underneath the photo above may relate to it rather than the J72. Reviewers were forever getting the model numbers of Tom's products wrong.
Some adverts indicate that the J72 had a twin-speed rotating speaker - either a species of the TS-series "Pulsators" offered by Jennings, or perhaps a full-blown P0.1 Pulsation unit.
The blurb from the JEI catalogue of autumn 1973.
Below, the Jennings pricelist from December 1972, the J72 and J73 pitched at fairly substantial sums. The Vox Continental and Riviera were considerably cheaper:
Detail of the JEI pricelist of December 1972.
Neither J72s nor J73s sold in great numbers, the price presumably being a prohibitive factor. One could buy a J70 for £418, an O50 amplifier section for £75, and a twin-speed PO.1 Pulsation unit for £157, and come away with much more versatile set up, not to mention spare change enough for several dozen slap-up dinners if one had budgeted for the whopping £720 of a J72.
Details on the form and scope of the Jennings two manual keyboard of the 1970s will appear on a forthcoming page on the J70.