The JEI J72 console organ
Two manual, built-in 50 watt amplifier, 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 that display sets were specially made up in white to exhibit at trade shows.
The J72 seems - on the face of things - to have been displayed for the first time in public for the first time at the Russell Hotel Trade Fair in late August 1971. Mention of its being a "Mark 1" and "portable" is unusual however, and leaves us with question of what the piece at the top of this page, which is certainly from late 1972, meant by "new". Perhaps the J72 Mark 2 in proper console form?
October 1971.
At any rate, since a note in the music press from December 1971 gives the J72's price (£450), a certain number must have been produced late in the year / early in 1972. Below, a further early mention of the model, though the context (source) will need to be checked:
January 1972.
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.