How to date a Lowrey organ — letter, digit and the bench

The late-model serial rule

On Lowreys from the 1990s onward, the serial encodes the date:

• A letter is the month, A through M — skipping I, which the factory never used: A=January, B=February, … H=August, J=September, K=October, L=November, M=December.
• The first digit after the letter is the year. So K1 = October 2001 and B5 = February 2005.
• An owner’s Festival NL20 shows 109E6 89392 with a factory label dated May 1996 — E=May, 6=1996, and the NL-20 line itself began in 1993. The rule checks out.

Where to look

• The plate sits on the right-hand side under the bottom keyboard — bring a flashlight.
• Original bench seats are often stamped with a production date — look underneath.
• Remove the back panel: many boards inside carry date stickers, which give year (sometimes the day) directly.

Era landmarks (for everything older)

• 1941 — Organo, a keyboard that attached to a piano, Lowrey’s answer to the Hammond Solovox.
• 1955 — first commercially successful electronic organ: the Model S / Berkshire; the Lincolnwood SS spinet arrives the same year.
• 1959 — Festival FL, the full console with speakers under the tone generator.
• 1961 — Holiday Deluxe LSL: the first Lowrey home organ with a built-in Leslie.
• 1964 — the transistor switch; early theatre organs follow.
• 1970 — Genie brings the automatic left hand and pedal.
• 1971–72 — Brass and String Symphonizers: small synthesizers in the upper manual — a reliable dating tell.
• 1979–80 — the peak years: organ is America’s favourite home instrument; the MX-1 and Celebration C-500 mark the top of the line.
• 1988 — Kawai acquires Lowrey; the generator changes from the G-series to NT (Kawai) around 1990, taking about two years.
• 1989 — Lowrey builds its 1,000,000th organ.
• 2011 — production partly moves to Indonesia; January 2019 — the line ends.

How to date yours

1. 2000s → decode the letter-digit serial exactly.
2. 1990+ → decide G-series or NT (NT from 1990: MX-2, Heritage, Holiday).
3. 1970s → look for Symphonizer controls (1971+) and Genie-era rhythm features.
4. 1955–1963 → the lamp era models above.
5. Exact year → dated stickers inside, or ask the specialist archive at lowreyorgan.uk, which answers publicly.

And its value?

Prepare for the honest answer: working home organs of the 1960s–70s routinely sell for nothing, and non-working ones cost money to move. Our value guide has the numbers and the reasons.

The Lowrey brand guide →Where is the serial plate? →