[HAM] New Hammond Factory Sound

[Harold]

From: "William Mark Bristow"

> pretty much the same as now.  There were Hammonds then that were thick and
> muddy - and some that were thin and nasal and some that sounded wonderful.
> I recently helped a church buy a CV (early 1940's I think) from the
> Salvation Army for $100.  From the keyboard feel, it has hardly been 
> played
> at all - and it sounds wonderful - wax caps and all.
>
>
>
> I wonder what honor the last one living will receive - the one who heard a
> brand new tone generated Hammond with his own mortal ears! - Everyone 
> please
> bow.
>
> (I'm kidding - really!!)
>
> Mark

Enter Harold, bones creaking-

I was over 30 when I bought my C3 new, serial implies being built about '55.

As far as remembering new sound- mine in some respects sounds better than 
new! The trimmer screw was in so dar as to really reduce true reponsiveness. 
I accidentally turne it a bit and found a wonderfully reponsive instrument.

Original wax caps but preamp was rebuiltabout 3 years ago which restored it 
out of the "all drawbars sound the same" category. I was having an extraneos 
noise problem for a while. A tech was convinced the only cure was to haul 
the organ to his shop and have him redo somethings, icluding recap, 
excluding busbars, amd hand him possibly $1,000. I do not consider him 
unscrupulous but he rfused to believe that I had finally traced the problem 
to a bad BH7 tube socket. I took the preamp to ma TV technician, he soldered 
in the socket and evrything is reklatively fine. Main point is the tech 
would no way fix the socket first or only!

I do have a few TG tones that carry a fairly large amount of adfjacent tone 
leakage. This can really sound disconcerting if you play one of these note 
or a combination including them while you are listening for the "artifact". 
I had the tech play the notes and he pronounced it as bein "normal" for a 
Hammond.

Thinking about it today- I recall that it shocked me to hear approximately 
that same type of thing listening to individual notes with some 
registrations when the organ was new! So even in this regard these 50 yr old 
wax capped organs sound like the new ones did! And it is part of the sound 
and part of the magic of the tone not being over precise and *too clean*.

I was almost shocked to find that my tone control is not set much different 
from yours. After all the strongest recapping promotors would suggest the 
highs would be all gone with wax caps and the tone control would have to be 
maxed- I don't even have the high drawbars full out much.

I do happen to be a yr older than Doug Irvine, who has an advantage on me of 
selling Hammonds. Also has a good ear- I'm about as bad as Aunt Mabel 
playing the doxology for the 3,000th time with the hymn book open every 
time!  As aliby- when you don't seriously get into music theory (or good 
ear) by your mid 30's you can't expect the same outcome as some  that 
started at age 6 and really went whole hog into it then. I guess the brain 
even develops differently then. The rest of the fake book open syndrome is 
that as you flip pages you find more tunes to play. Also for us self taught 
but not too well- I do get some improvisng ideas to flow easier with the 
chord symbols available, and riffs and fill ins flow off the symbols.  Hey 
occassionally I sound good, and I sometimes put the mistakes in different 
places.

BTW I was 82 at the end of July.

Harold