[HAM] Chopping Hammonds

[Bohachewsky, Andrew V.]

Hey John,

I was going to post the exact same sentiment. I can get my full C3 chop
with pedals, a Leslie and a bass amp into a Toyota 4runner. I do need an
extra set of hands to pull the chop out of the SUV and get it on a
handtruck. At that point it's a one man operation until the pedal base
is set up, then once again an extra set to flip the chop onto the base.
Teardown is obviously just the opposite.

Your swell approach was tried and did not work. My tech did talk to you
about it, and we realized there were issues involved. I was not aware
that even with your very careful expensive approach you still lost some
throw, I play jazz and that would not have been acceptable.

I use a pot on a real swell pedal assembly controlling a servo connected
to the swell cap. The current control circuit is a cheap and sleazy 555
timer solution. This actually works fine for me, I'm even able to set
the hi and low travel points via trim pots. ~$40 total expense. 

This is not the optimal solution, I plan on replacing that with a micro
controller solution. That effort's going a little slow (I can't help
that the damn thing works pretty good as is!)

Any interest out there in a microcontroller solution? Not sure if this
would be a kit form product or just an 'open source' contribution.

Andy  



-----Original Message-----
From: hammond-bounces at zeni.net [mailto:hammond-bounces at zeni.net] On
Behalf Of JOHN HABURAY
They travel with trailers and a chop does indeed take up less room. They
are able to stack the rest of the band stuff in the same trailer. 

Also, many players now are using SUV's to move their stuff. One of my
chops and a Leslie will fit in any SVU even a jeep Cherokee. No more
vans and/or trailers. 


I don't destroy organs here. Most of them are already more than half
dead in the original form anyway as far as I am concerned. Functioning
doesn't cut it here either. 

  I like it but am always thinking of another possible solutions,
because it is tricky, kind of expensive, a lot of work, and I do lose
some of the "throw" of the pedal. Most of my rock guys are loud and
louder most of the time anyway, so it really isn't an issue with a
shorter throw