HELPFUL INFO TO MAKE YOUR ORGAN AND LESLIE SCREAM BETTER

[Wil]

HELPFUL INFO TO MAKE YOUR ORGAN AND LESLIE SCREAM BETTER
If you want to make your organ scream and use its potential this what you can do. It only works for organ models: A100, C-2, C-3, B-2, B-3, Rt-2,RT-3, D-100. If you have one of these organs you can take the back of the organ off. You will then see your amp. It has a transformer and tubes on it. You can do this either with the organ on or off. You will see small knob that is silver on the amp that says TONE. It will kinda of toward the middle of the frontside of the amp facing you. It will also look similiar to a screw. You can either use your hand or a flat screw to turn it all the way to the Right. This will boost the organs pitch up big time. On my organs that I have here, I turn them all the way up. There is also on the C-3, B-3, A-100, RT-3 models another adjustable tone for the Percussions over towards the right. You can turn it up as well for the percussion volume.

[ABOVEALL]

Will this turn the pitch up or does this effect the volume, tone, wave, etc.?

[an_etonian]

I think I might be on the wrong site...I just play an ordinary Hill Organ - none of this stuff.

[bishopcole]

No it will not turn the volume up or effect the wave parameters,but it will give you a funky "LETS GO TO CHURCH" sound! Try it and you will be amazed! I have been using this for years. The Bishop

[C3Killer]

That Is True about the tone control, but at the same time, you will kill your treble driver at the same time, thus shortening its life

[CATRON]

THIS METHOD DOESN'T WORK ON ALL STANDARD ORGANS. THIS WILL NOT SOUND THAT GRACEFUL IF YOU HAVE ONE OF THE NEWER MODELED B-3's, C-3's, ect. THE ORGAN'S TONE WON'T BE "AGED" ENOUGH TO HANDLE ALL OF THAT OVERDRIVE. AND ALSO IF YOU DO THIS, YOUR SOFT PADDING CHORDS WILL ALSO HAVE THE NASTY, GRIMMY OVERDRIVE. THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN ACOMPLISH THIS TRADITIONAL DIRTY SOUND IS TO TRY TO PURCHASE OLDER PRODUCTS. ONE OF THE MOST POPULAR ORGANS HERE IN ST. LOUIS IS THE KENNERLY TEMPLE COGIC'S ORGAN. IT HAS THE BEST OVERDRIVE I HAVE EVER HEARD. AND ANYBODY WHO HAS PLAYED IT OR EVAN HEARD IT CAN SECOND THAT. AND THE ONLY REASON IT SOUNDS LIKE THAT IS B/C OF ITS AGE. (To my knowledge) WHEN THE MAIN ORGANIST THERE AT KENNERLY WENT TO PURCHASE THE ORGAN HE TOLD THE SALESMAN. "Gimme the oldest B-3 and leslie you all have in stock." AND THAT THING PUR'S. SO IN CLOSING ( ) THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN ACOMPLISH THAT TRADITIONAL SOUND IS TO LET THE ORGAN AGE. B/C IF YOU THINK ABOUT IT; IT YOU DO TWEAK YOUR INTERNAL TREBAL SETTINGS, ONCE THE ORGAN DOES GAIN SOME AGE, IT WILL SOUND SOOOO UGLY YOU WON'T WANT IT ANYMORE. B/C OF THE NATURAL OVERDRIVE AND THE OVERDRIVE ON THE TREBLE BOOST.







HOLLA

[bishopcole]

Catron you are right! That is why it is so hard to fine a real b3 aged organ. The older the better I say! Bishop Cole

[ABOVEALL]

Hit 1 time for Kennerly and Professor Woody.

[key-wiz]

THIS METHOD DOESN'T WORK ON ALL STANDARD ORGANS. THIS WILL NOT SOUND THAT GRACEFUL IF YOU HAVE ONE OF THE NEWER MODELED B-3's, C-3's, ect. THE ORGAN'S TONE WON'T BE "AGED" ENOUGH TO HANDLE ALL OF THAT OVERDRIVE. AND ALSO IF YOU DO THIS, YOUR SOFT PADDING CHORDS WILL ALSO HAVE THE NASTY, GRIMMY OVERDRIVE. THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN ACOMPLISH THIS TRADITIONAL DIRTY SOUND IS TO TRY TO PURCHASE OLDER PRODUCTS. ONE OF THE MOST POPULAR ORGANS HERE IN ST. LOUIS IS THE KENNERLY TEMPLE COGIC'S ORGAN. IT HAS THE BEST OVERDRIVE I HAVE EVER HEARD. AND ANYBODY WHO HAS PLAYED IT OR EVAN HEARD IT CAN SECOND THAT. AND THE ONLY REASON IT SOUNDS LIKE THAT IS B/C OF ITS AGE. (To my knowledge) WHEN THE MAIN ORGANIST THERE AT KENNERLY WENT TO PURCHASE THE ORGAN HE TOLD THE SALESMAN. "Gimme the oldest B-3 and leslie you all have in stock." AND THAT THING PUR'S. SO IN CLOSING ( ) THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN ACOMPLISH THAT TRADITIONAL SOUND IS TO LET THE ORGAN AGE. B/C IF YOU THINK ABOUT IT; IT YOU DO TWEAK YOUR INTERNAL TREBAL SETTINGS, ONCE THE ORGAN DOES GAIN SOME AGE, IT WILL SOUND SOOOO UGLY YOU WON'T WANT IT ANYMORE. B/C OF THE NATURAL OVERDRIVE AND THE OVERDRIVE ON THE TREBLE BOOST.







HOLLA

All I Can Say Is Amen

[Big_Al]

I have a Hammond B3 bult in 1967 w/147 Leslie. The organ is over 40 years old and it has GREAT sound. The Leslie screams. How did I do it? I changed the horn to my Leslie to handle the mids and highs. As for my bass amp, I also changed as well. I can forward the model numbers and frequency if you're interested.

In addition, I have my organ serviced every four months and re-tubed the organ and Lesie during this period (although I don't need this). I donated the tubes to my friends. The sound is PHAT, WARM, and awesome when needed.

God Bless you in your music ministry.

-Al

[mt_spiffy]

WHat did you change the bass driver to?  The way Leslies are designed, the only drivers that will really work well and sound good are those that are designed to replace the originals.

Now it's true the stock treble drivers are very fragile.  Hammond-Sukuzi makes a replacement driver designed to serve the same purpose but be a bit tougher, it's also a bit brighter.

Here's a great page with lots of information on that:

http://www.dairiki.org/HammondWiki/LeslieDriverReplacement

But, I want to be clear, you can not put any old horn driver or woofer in there, especially if it's not 16 ohms, you will damage the amp.  Don Leslie really did it right the first time.  Use the original drivers or specially designed replacements.

Second of all, I think there was some confusion about what Will was suggesting.  There are three things you can adjust in there.  One is the percussion decay rate, dont worry about that unless you use percussion (and in most churches I've found the percussion tubes are burnt out anyhow!), the preamp drive level (which msot people leave alone and you should cause if it's not set right it wont sound right, here's info on that: http://www.dairiki.org/HammondWiki/HowtoAdjustThePreampDriveLevel )  and there's the tone control, which is on the preamp and is basically a treble control.

Blowing your Leslie driver is a lot more likely from distortion than it is from excessive treble.  If you blow your Leslie driver from excessive treble chances are there were too much distortion in there too and the treble just was the last straw.  On a properly set up organ there is nothing wrong with turning the tone control all the way to the right, it will make the organ sound much brighter if it was previously set to the left.  I have all my organs set this way and I've never blown a Leslie driver.

There is a LOT of really good technical information about Hammonds on the web, so much so that any church could just about do all their own organ repairs for free with a computer and a soldering iron.  Check out The Hammond List, HamTech, The Hammond Zone . . .

[mt_spiffy]

Also, and I'm not the expert on this, I'm just going from memory . . .

There are two reasons Hammonds sound different depending on age.  One is that, as the years progressed, the manufacturing changed slightly.  The Hammonds from the 70s, when they were about to be discountinued, they were using basically any old leftover parts and the quality wasnt as good.  In the very oldest Hammonds, they didnt have the same technology as was available later as far as types of capacitors and all that.

The second reason is, resistors and capacitors tend to drift with age.  Usually they drift to sound muddier, but also sweeter.  That 1957 B3 probably sounded a lot brighter when it came off the line as it does now!  The solution to this problem, and this is what the big organ stores and techs do when they resell an organ (at least some do, they should) is REBUILD the preamp.  You take out all the original resistors and capacitors and put in brand new ones.  Someone who knows how to solder can do this themselves, I did this to one of my Leslie amps and you wouldnt BELIEVE how it sounds.  This also makes it less likely the organ will have problems down the line.  But the older the organ, the more the componants will have drifted, and the muddier, less loud, etc it will sound.  Especially the real older Hammonds, like I said, they didnt have the same technology to make capacitors and such so they were a lot more prone to drifting.

The combination of these two factors, I've always been told the best Hammonds are the ones from the 60s.  They're from before the production started to go downhill, but not so old that they're way off.  Whereas a BC or BV or any organ from before they made B3s, if it hasnt been rebuilt, may sound quite muddy!  That having been said, any Hammond can be rebuilt to sound like new. 

I'm mainly talking about rebuilding the preamp, and possibly also the Leslie amp.  Many sites offer capacitor kits to rebuild the tone generator filter network, now from what I've heard, as well as my experience, this usually isnt necessary.  Dont worry about that for now.

[C3Killer]

Also to getting a different sound from your hammond also comes from the leslie. Depending on what model you have can also dictate how your hammond will sound. A 147 leslie is actually brighter than a 122 leslie and withe the electronic models like the 122xb and the 771 models you can create your own response curve to the point were you can control the brightness on the organ with out damaging it.