Single Manual Continentals
Although they had similar tones and appearance, there were 4 different builds of the Vox Continental. The first were UK models built by Jennings Musical Industries, or JMI, in Dartford, Kent, England. Later UK models were built by Vox Sound in Erith, Kent.
For a short time following Thomas Organ's 1964 licensing deal with VOX, single manual Continentals were built in the USA at the Thomas Organ factory at 8345 Hayvenhurst Avenue in Sepulveda, California. There were reportedly approximately 300 of these 301-H (for "Hayvenhurst") organs made, mostly during the months of April through June 1966. Production was then moved to the EME factory in Italy.
Hayvenhurst Continentals are distinguished by their unique tone generator boards (sourced from Thomas' line of home organs), wooden keys covered in plastic, which feature they shared with their Jennings-made forebears, and which have a very nice "touch" feel, and use of American standard hardware, which was a good deal more robust than the metric hardware used on the Italian-made Continentals, which make up roughly 80 % of all Continental production, Hayvenhurst Continentals comprise about 3 % of total single-manual production, with the balance being early UK-built units. Italian models can be discerned from UK and US models by their flimsy plastic keys, white and red (instead of cream and maroon) drawbars and crossed stand braces. Some think that the sound of the Italian versions was thinner than that of its UK and US counterparts, and that UK and US Continentals, as far as appearance and sound quality, were essentially identical (even though the US-built Continentals had little in common electronically with their English predecessors). The build quality and reliability of the US-built Continentals are held to be superior to the other three variations.
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