JVC instruments rebranded as Lowrey

Oddly, JVC did not sell any instruments under their own brand name in America. However they did sell their KB series there rebanded as Lowrey - a well known organ manufacturer. To make it clear these are JVC designed instruments and manufactured by JVC in Japan, but the cases were branded as Lowrey and Lowrey handled the marketing. In some countries, such as Australia and England, instruments were sold under both brands concurrently. Apart from the KB series, none of the other JVC instruments made it to the US.

Some of the rebrandings were straight copies, some had small changes, while the V-105 had no direct equivalent. I believe in all cases the Lowrey versions used their own fingering system for automatic cords rather than JVC’s.

Lowrey model	Rebrading of which JVC model
Micro Genie V-60	KB-300 / KB-303
Micro Genie V-100	KB-500
Micro Genie V-101	KB-500
Micro Genie V-105	Somewhere between a KB-600 and KB-808
Micro Genie V-120	KB-700
Micro Genie V-125	KB-808
Micro Genie Pro V-600	KB-800
Carnival L-80	Similar to the Lowrey L-90, but little else is know about this model
Festival L-90	KB-808 built into an organ body

Notes

- There are other Lowrey portable keyboards with the V prefix, but they were not made by JVC (I believe they were Hohner rebrandings), and probably didn’t have the Micro Genie tag. The non-JVC models in the V series include V40, V50, V70 and V130. Likewise, there are other Lowrey models in the L/Carnival/Festival range that JVC were not involved in.

- A fairly new discovery is that JVC manufactured some of Lowrey’s Genius range. To what degree, if any, they were involved in the design of these instruments is unclear. More research is under way!

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