Farfisa VIP 202

I'm posting this just to help other people who have trouble tuning their farfisa.
I emailed PeterProject and he gave me the solution. Thanks a lot Peter !
Here it is:

"
> On the bottom, there is a small hole, with a black grommet sort of thing.
> Believe it or not, though you cant see it, deep in that hole there's a
> master tune pot. I only figured it out, becuase I took the whole thing
> apart. Taking the lid off and tearing it apart to get at it may actally be
> easier."

Cheers,
Vlad

This is a pretty sraight forward set up. Its a five octave keyboard, with a optional bass section. It has drawbars, (some of wich are just glorified on-off tabs)which are all pretty easy to work so long as you aren't a retard.

As far as combo organs go, this thing has some pretty cool stuff on it. The bottom octave and a half can be swiched to a bass section. which is very... very...BIG. My neighbours downstairs dont like it nearly as much as I do. The drawbars consist of "accompanyment" (bass) Treble (tones) which is basically a few filtered tones, and a 5th tone as well. A percussion section, a vibrado section (on-off, and speed)as well as a Wah-Wah section(bass on-off, treble on-off, and speed) The percussion can be switched to "repeat, which gives an interesting machine gun type tone, the speed of which can be altered if you open up the top, and play with the pots. The WahWah functions a bit like a dynamic wah, as it is triggered every time you hit a treble key. If you turn on the wah in the bass section, it is still only triggered by keys in the treble section. Weird. By far the most messed up feature is the "slalom" pedal. I dont actually have one, but if you take a regular volume pedal, and connect it via a RTS y-cable, than you can get it working. It basicly takes the whole pitch and sends it diving way up, and down. I dont... really know what use this is other than making not so musical ramshakle madness. But its pretty fun, and my neighbors love that more than the bass. It is "portable" but it's not very coveinient. The stand comes off, and if you dont mind unscrewing bits of it, it will fold up rather nicely. Easier than a drum kit I guess...

The sounds on this are definetly what youd expect from a farfisa. The reedy vibrado, as well as some pretty "organy" tones. But on top of this you get the Wah Wah, which funkafies anything you play, the repeating percution which os very Stereolab, and when you add the slalom pedal, you've got polyphonic synth sounds WAY ahead of its time. This is a great organ for Garage, ska, and surf, but can definetly work in new wave electronic projects.

I've had it a week, and haven't stopped playing it, so I can't really say, though it IS 30 years old. It's in tune... with itself, But it's a quarter tone off with the rest of the world. and I can't tune it. The tuning pots are nowhere to be seen.

Right....
I can't even find anybody who's even HEARED of a 202, and I dont know of anyone who fixes them. The tuning bit is a pain, as I cant find the bloody tuning pots. If ANYONE can help me here, I'd be a very happy man.

I love this thing, and it's nice enough that my roommate lets me keep it in the livingroom! I've got an Ace tone top-5, as well as a Nanosynth, and they all give cool organ tones, and I like them all. It looks nice, it sounds nice, and I think I'm developing a physical attraction to it. When I bought it, it was either the Yamaha YS-20 or this, and the Yamaha was ugly, and sounded like my Top-5. The only thing I wish I had for it was a leslie, or some type of spinning cab.