Planet Gear: Apparat Organ Quartet's Yamaha YC-20

All week this week on DiS Apparat Organ Quartet kick off a new 'Planet Gear' irregular feature on DiS, in which we ask musicians to get a bit geeky and talk us through the equipment that makes the magic happen. Today Jóhann Jóhannsson talks us through his Yamaha YC-20...

You can catch up with the rest of the Planet Gear series here.

The Yamaha YC-20 is one of the most recent organs to join the AOQ collection. We have had both the YC-30 and YC-45. Actually Úlfur´s main organ on the road has been the Yamaha YC-30, while I´ve been playing Farfisa professional for the past few years. The YC-20 is a beautiful design from the 1970s. It was the favourite organ of the early minimalists, Terry Reilly, Philip Glass etc. It´s high-gloss Ivory surface and those huge knobs are really nice. The sound can be both smooth and dreamy or fuzzy and aggressive.

I bought it from a Danish musician who had travelled with it for several years and it has never failed. It's built into a sturdy flight case, so it´s pretty a good touring organ. I've played a few gigs with it and it changed the live sound of the band for the better so I think it is going to be part of our live set from now on.

By Jóhann Jóhannsson