The Royal Artist Piano is a reed based organ. It has a fan. When you hold down a note or chord button, that makes a space for the air to flow over a reed to make the sound. The reed banks for the keyboard and button sections are those from an accordion, and the fan simply provides the air in lieu of bellows.
It is an acoustic instrument. It has no electronic parts. There are no outputs, or ways to connect it to an amp. If you want to record this, you must use a microphone. Now the stinker is, that fan makes a lot of noise, which as you know isn’t very good for recording instruments. So, the Farfisa Royal Artist Piano, she is not so good for the gigging musician, and thus not worth too terribly much.
8 comments on “Farfisa Royal Artist Piano”
Is this related to (predates?) the Golden Voice?
What is this Golden Voice you speak of?
Jim
I have a Farfisa Golden Voice which is in dire need of restoration. Can anyone tell me anything about it? How old is it? Are there agents/spares available in Australia? Anything ?! 🙂 Thanks in advance. Marc.
What is this piece worth? I have a chance to get one for $35,is that a good deal?Thanks
What is this piece worth?
How much is this item worth?
I sold someones… trying to replace ; (
When I was 3 or 4, my parents bought a Royal Artist “organ” (probably a Royal Artist Piano) at a yard sale for $15. I immediately started playing with it, and I was playing melodies by ear and composing original melodies within days. It had a beautiful wooden case that opened up to use as a music stand. We didn’t have legs for it, though it probably had legs originally (for all I know, they were stored inside the bottom; we never knew to look for them). I don’t think the keys were scalloped, as I have seen in some 1950s models, so I am guessing it was a 1960s model.
I remember that it had two pairs of black keys next to each other, either at the top or the bottom (from the photo I have, I believe it was at the top, though I’ve seen other models with this at the bottom), so either the lowest note was a G, or the highest note was an A. It had about 3 octaves. It had at least 2 rows of chord buttons to the left of the keyboard, one black and one white, as I recall. There might have been more rows of white, but I think there was just one row of each. The buttons were round, not square as on some models. The wood was incredibly beautiful. I have a photo of me sitting on the flour playing it as a four-year-old, but can only see a small part of the organ in the photo, so it’s probably not very useful.
The fan quit working, so my dad threw it away. I begged and begged him to let me keep it. I believed it could have been fixed (and I was probably right). I followed him outside and pleaded, but to no avail. Even though we got a piano a couple years later, I’ve always missed that organ, the instrument that I first composed music on. I would dearly love to have one like it. I haven’t seen a photo online of the same exact model, at least I don’t think so. I’d love help identifying it, and I’m interested if anyone has one for sale. I won’t pay more than it’s worth, as this is mostly just for sentimental reasons, but I’d really love to identify it, since it was so instrumental in my life (pun intended), as I am still writing piano music 36 years later.
If anyone can help identify the model from my description and photo, please let me know!
The photo is in the lower left corner of this photo collage: https://imgprx.livejournal.net/16edafebc412ab3012261c00d3c7adab77045043/GruVnrPHjb9sVoRsQyw4_wEJiySxK862Xr6dSNTo8Vk287c8cl3WhBszSqhyrfvQNS8uwyWw7RKhdJ0biyiKFh3brOEgvMQmBx4yEsWgOKM