Fender Contempo Organ

Combo organ

The Fender Contempo Organ is a combo organ made by Fender during the late 1960s. It was designed to compete with similar instruments such as the Vox Continental and Farfisa Compact, and had additional stops, features and controllers not found on the other models. However, it was only in production for a few years as it struggled to compete with the more popular Hammond organ and Rhodes piano.

In the early to mid 1960s, there was an influx of inexpensive portable combo organs introduced by companies such as Vox, Gibson and Farfisa. Fender wanted to diversify from their established guitar and amplifier market and create a wider product range, and noticed this demand for keyboard instruments. The Fender Rhodes was already entering production, so a combo organ seemed the next logical step. The Contempo Organ was announced in 1967; the Fender Vibratone, a copy of the Leslie speaker, was introduced at the same time. The instrument's list price in 1968 was $795 ($795.0 in 1968 is equivalent to about <calculated amount> in recent years in ). By the time the instrument was introduced on the market, combo organs were on the wane and the Hammond organ and electric pianos were becoming more popular. There was a limited amount of trade interest, and consequently production ended in 1969. Bill Carson, who designed the Fender Stratocaster, was particularly scathing about the instrument, calling it "the Contemptuous" and "a pile of junk". He attributed the problems to CBS' acquisition of Fender in 1965, which reduced the quality of the company's product range.

The Contempo was commercially unsuccessful and few models were manufactured, and was not used by many professional musicians. Keith Jarrett played a Contempo in Miles Davis' group, after Fender had given Davis the instrument. It can be heard together with the Rhodes piano on the album Live Evil and by itself on some live recordings with Davis, when Chick Corea took over the Rhodes and Jarrett only played the Contempo.