Panther 300 owner

[rich]

Hi, My name is Rich and I have owned an Elka Panther 300 with an Organ King II AMP and Haynes speaker cabinet for 40 years. My parents bought it for me used in 1969 when I was always borrowing a Gem Combo from a friend of mine. I played in a garage band in Maryland along with my brother on drums in 69 and70 and played the organ in my basement for a few years before putting it away. I decided to get it back out in 1983 but it was out of tune and the power switch went out shortly after. I took it to a music store to get it repaired and when I got it back it still sounded flat on some notes, I called the store back and the repairman said he did all he could do. Well I got sick of it and put it down the basement until last month when I ran across it looking around for other things .I found another repairman and he now has it sounding pretty good. The bad thing is I never put the legs back in the case and stored them in the garage and my wife threw them away a few years ago, I still have the case and the hand bolts but not the original stand. Back in 1969 the singer in our band decided to paint the cover of the organ for me when it had a few cigarette burns on it,we always kept an ashtray on top of it. This was a kind of tye dye paint job and when I got it out of storage last month I decided I was going to try to remove the paint. I finally found a product called graffiti remover that was safe for plastics but it still took me 2 days to remove that 40 yr old spray paint. This is a white Panther and I think it looks pretty cool even with the cigarette burns.Well I'm now back into it and hope to find an original stand and swell pedal for it.
Glad to be here on this forum, Rich.

[mtwallet]

welcome Rich! nice story! please post photos of the organ if you can! I used to have a panther 100 a few months ago ; great beast!

[rich]

Hi, I just put a picture on the Photo thread, I'll take some more and put them on soon,
Rich.

[karl]

Hi Rich,
Great pic, Nice jop on the refinish. I have never seen a white one before. I had a keyboard to fix once with cigg burns on the keys. I used some fine grit sand paper to sand it down flat and then polished all the black out of the llittle hole. You could hardly notice it afterwards.
- Karl

[rich]

Hi Karl.
luckily no cigarettes ever fell on the keys,I'm going to leave the top the way it is now,Do you have a Panther? If you do, do you know what type of bulb goes into the tone decay? The bulb that was in there from who knows when has a # 48 on it,I have replaced it with several # 48 bulbs and the tone decay works great but they keep blowing out. I should be getting a service manual soon so that should help.
Rich.