History

Furniture factory in Waddinxveen Electronics factory in Bodegraven Eminent was founded in 1923 by mister Vreeken as a family-owned shop. Mainly organs and harmoniums were sold then. In 1969 the company was expanded by his sons Kees, Frits and Louis Vreeken and at that time they decided to build their own organs under the brandname Eminent. At first they built a model 300 but it lacked of the famous string section. But it did have a connection for a leslie speaker. Due to rights Eminent wanted to have an alternative leslie system. Eventually they invented an electronic way to simulate the effect which was called Orbitone. They also discovered that Orbitone could make very broad sounding strings. So model 300 was expanded with Orbitone and stringensemble and the 310 was born! Economic recession and lack of demand for traditional home-organs (caused by new brands like Casio, Yamaha en Technics) meant the end of Eminent in 1984. In that same year Eminent BV was established, still successful today in manufacturing electronic church organs: www.eminentorgans.nl

1	The electronic design starts at the drawing table. Two engineers at work designing the electronic diagram (also put inside of every organ).
Preparing parts before assembly at the factory. In the front among other things transformers were made and at the left-hand side the bass pedals. At the back a collection of electronic boards were put together on a metal frame. These metal frames were mounted like a door that could be opened to make it easy for future repairs.	2
3	Wires were assembled on a metal frame. Because Eminent did not want internal connectors attached because of its jamming sensitivity they were directly soldered on the electronic boards.
Testing an Eminent 2000 Grand Theatre.	4
5	After assembly organs were tested by putting them on for a few days. A testing method to eliminate assembly errors.
Five production teams were at work every day. An average amount of 100 organs were produced a day! They were not only were sold in Holland but also exported to Belgium, Luxembourg, Scandinavia and Canada.	6