Hammond Extravaganza Part 2 : A HAMMOND S

....THE HAMMOND ORGAN

                    “From a poor man’s pipe organ to

                     a progrock musician's big band”

PART ONE:

Chapter 11: PA members about the Hammond organ and their favorite

                   Hammond Albums: Jim Garten, Ozzy Tom, Jimmy Row, Easy

                   Money, Rivertree and Dalt99)

Chapter 12: This is not a Hammond organ! (about the Farfisa, Gibson and

                    Vox Continental organs)

Chapter 13: Sources of information

Chapter 14: Interesting links

       I would like to start with Part One, the

   THE HAMMOND ORGAN

                 “From a poor man’s pipe organ to

PART ONE

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2 : The history of the Hammond organ

Chapter 3: How do the Hammond organ and Leslie speaker work? By PA member Pierreolivier

Chapter 4: The heavy weighted Hammond models on the small catwalk

Chapter 1: An introduction

 

The Hammond organ was already embraced by the jazz musicians in the early Sixties but in the second part of the Sixties and in the first part of the Seventies it turned out to be a perfect keyboard for many (progressive) rock artists, especially because the powerful and varied Hammond organ could compete with the many decibels coming from huge Marshall guitar amplifiers! If you look at the amount of Sixties and Seventies hits with the Hammond organ in their sound, it’s amazing, just look at this list:

- Green Onions and Time is Tight by Booker T & The MG’s

- You Keep Me Hangin’On by Vanilla Fudge

- Fire by The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown

- Born To Be Wild by Steppenwolf

- A Whiter Shade Of Pale by Procol Harum

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

- Gimme Some Lovin’ by The Spencer Davis Group

- Hold Your Head up by Argent

- With A Little Bit Help From Your Friends by Joe Cocker

- Sympathy by Steve Rowland & Family Dogg

- Black Magic Woman by Santana and ... of course Child In Time by Deep

   Purple, incredible!

 

   

I have always loved the sound of the Hammond organ and other ‘vintage keyboards’ like the Mellotron, Minimoog synthesizer and Solina string-ensemble. In the autumn of 1998 I got the idea to write a ‘vintage keyboard’ special for the Dutch progrock magazine iO Pages. My knowledge about the Mellotron and Moog synthesizer is decent but the Hammond organ was technically a kind of unknown keyboard for me. So I started to collect information and stumbled upon the name Frank Obertop that was given by several Hammond organ fans. He is the editor of the Dutch Hammond organ society named Turning Wheel and he even appeared on TV talking about the Hammond organ during a popular music programm. It was quite easy to get in touch with him, he reacted enthousiastically on my plans for a special Hammond organ chapter in the vintage keyboards special and Frank even invited me to take a look at his Hammond organ collection! This was stored in the basement of an old Victorian-like building in Hilversum, it had been used for a famous Dutch political talk-show entitled Het Capitol, broadcasted every Sunday morning in the Eighties. I will never forget the moment that I entered the basement and looked at all those wonderfully shaped Hammond organs, from the famous B3 to the spinet models and he also owned two huge Leslie speakers. I was stunned and for me this was the key-moment to start my Hammond organ fascination, gradually grown mighty close to my deep love for the Mellotron!

In this article you will read about the special, very powerful and varied sound (from soaring in A Whiter Shade Of Pale by Procol Harum to ‘churchy’ halfway the titletrack of Close To The Edge by Yes), the different models, famous and exciting Hammond organ players, the Hammond in progrock, Hammond drenched albums and some PA members will tell you about their fascination, a big hand for the Hammond organ!

Chapter 2: History

 

CHAPTER 2 : THE HISTORY OF THE HAMMOND ORGAN

 

 

 

The story of the Hammond organ starts with the man who invented it and gave his name to his invention: Laurens Hammond. He was born in Illinois, USA on January 11^th in 1885. After his father’s death in 1898 (thanks Angelo ) the broken family moved to Europe and they lived in Geneva, Dresden and Paris. Young Laurens spoke fluently English, German and French and designed an automatic transmission for automoblies. In 1916 he graduated from Cornell University with a degree in mechanical engineering. In World War I he had to follow his duty in the American Expeditionary Force in France and spent two years as chief engineer of Gray Motor Company. In 1920 he invented a silent spring-driven clock, the sale which brought him enough money to quit the Gray Motor job. He moved back to the USA and rent a lof in New York City where he developped the 60-cycle synchronous motor that he later used in the manufactue of electric clocks and his tone-wheel organs. Among Laurens his patented inventions were the familiar cardboard spectacles with red and green eyepieces for viewing 3-D film, an automatic bridge table that shuffled a deck of cards into four piles. Laurens his Hammond Clock Company conduscted business from 1928 until it became  the Hammond Instrument Company in 1937.

In 1933 Hammond turned his attention to the production on an electric organ. He bought an used piano for US $ 15,- and discarded everything but the keyboard. Using it as a controller, he experimented with a number of different sound-generating techniques before settling on the tone-wheel generator. Laurens Hammond developed his instrument based on the design of the Cahill Telharmonian. After the tone-wheel generator was very well engineered, the organ went into production, the 30-page  Hammond organ patent was filed on January 19 in 1934 and in June 1935 the first Hammond organ named the Hammond A was produced (until October 1938).

The goal of the Hammond Organ Company was to sell to churches and concert halls as a portable and less expensive way for a church to have an instrument that sounded like a pipe organ without the pipes. Given the cost of the pipe organ competition many Hammonds were sold. A number of them found their way to black gospel churches, and it is from this environment many of the early jazz and blues players developed their styles. Laurens Hammond also aimed at the home, this resulted in the smaller M, M-2 and M-3 socalled spinet models (two 44-note manuals instead of two 61-note manuals), produced between November 1948 and January 1964. Meanwhile in 1961 Hammond also produced the popular spinet models L-100 and M-100. But the most famous Hammond organ are the legendary Hammond A-100 (1959-1965), B-3 (1955-late 1974) and C-3 (1955-late Seventies). These Hammond models are internally all similar, nonetheless the B-3 became the most popular with its distinctive spindly legs (meant to show the player using the pedals) but the A-100 (with built-in amplifier and speakers) and the C-3 (solid side and back casing) wer also very popular.

When designed, it came with a PR40 tone cabinet consisting of front facing speakers in a cabinet that simulated the sound of the pipes. Don Leslie designed a cabinet with a rotating speaker that he wanted to have Hammond include in its manufacturing process. Hammond did not feel it had the pure sound he wanted for his organ. Leslie manufactured his own cabinets and people bought them separate. It consisted of an upper rotor for the high frequency driver and a rotating cage on the bottom with a scoop which projects the sound from the down-facing low speaker. This created a sound that locked in perfectly with the sound of the organ and in fact became know as the "Hammond Sound".

Hammond later started calling the B models the "Home Model" because you could see the organist's legs work the pedals. C and RT models had full modesty panels across the back supposedly so female church organists would not worry the congregation was looking up their dress while playing.

People played the Hammonds from the time of manufacture throughout the 1940's but Jimmy Smith was the man that popularized the instrument in the 1950's with his trio consisting of organ, guitar and drums. Others were playing the instrument but Jimmy defined the style. In the 1960's he did some albums with Lalo Schiffrin and Oliver Nelson which took the organ to an original voice with a big band and others such as Gerald Wilson had Richard "Groove" Holmes on organ on many of his albums with his big band. Booker T and the MGs put it to work on much of the Stax recordings of the 1960's and had many albums on their own hits including "Green Onions" and "Time Is Tight".

It then went into the rock arena with the Young Rascals, Procol Harem, Chicago, The Allman Brothers, Santana and became an integral part of the music scene with many different tones and colors to choose from. Especially in the progressive rock movement the sound of the Hammond organ was omnipresent in the Seventies music from bands like Yes, Genesis, ELP, Barclay James Harvest, Camel, Jethro Tull and Gentle Giant.

With the synthesizer revolution of the 1970's and 1980's then samplers that were basically recordings of the Hammond organ sound and because of the weight of the 600-pound instrument and difficulty of carrying it around it became less and less plausible to include the instrument on stage performances. Hammond abandoned tonewheel organ production in the late 70's and, sadly, stopped making the instrument in 1984. Several keyboards have come out since then which have tried to simulate the instrument. They began developing other markets with the inclusion of rhythm units, auto-chord, and self-accompanying organs. However, none have captured the tone and feel of the original Hammond tone-wheel organs!

 

Chapter 3: THE HAMMOND ORGAN- How Does It Work?

by Pierre-Olivier Turmel

 

The Hammond organ is a trademark sound in many musical styles. It featured in different styles of music such as jazz, gospel, R & B, rock and, of course, progressive rock. Since it’s sound is very known, very few knew how this sound is produced and how it work.  In this article, I will describe, in simplified terms, how the Hammond organ produce his glorious sound.

 

THE TONE GENERATOR AND THE TONEWHEELS

The creation of the Hammond organ is often attributed to Laurens Hammond, a inventor who already created such novelties such as clockworks, 3D movies and card-dealing bridge table. Since Laurens Hammond is the actual inventor of the Hammond organ, he take the inner working of his future organ to an other inventor, Thaddeus Cahill.  He invented, three decades before the Hammond organ, a massive instrument called the Telharmonium.  That instrument is basically a Hammond organ without the amplificacation system.  The Telharmonium was a massive instrument and it’s amplification system required train wagons to be transported, not a very pratical instrument.

In 1933, Laurens Hammond was already in the business of clockworks and with the assistance of a research engineer, John Hanert, decided to apply the Cahill’s Telharmonium working into a more compact and transportable instrument, the Hammond organ first organ, the Model A was born.

The main ingredient in the Hammond sound is mainly due to the tonewheels generator. That system consists of  tonewheels that spins and produced an electric current that is captured by a coil and then amplified via a vacuum tube amplifier. In console organs models like the B3, C3 and A-100, 96 of those tonewheels are inside of the organ but only 91 of those actually produce sound, the 5 others are there to balance the mecanism.  Those tonewheels are made in steel and are the size of a silver dollar.  The resulting pitch depend of the numbers of notches that those tonewheels had on their edges and the spinning speed.  The end of the coil contain a rod-shape permanent magnet and when the tonewheel spin at a certain speed, it create a small voltage between the tonewheel and the magnet, resulting in a sound that is captured by a pickup and travel via a wire and then to the amplifier and then to the speakers.  The more notches that a tonewheel that pass the rod in a second, the higher the pitch will be. The lowest octave on the organ used tonewheels that had 2 notches. Subsequent octaves on the organ will had 4,8,16,32,64,128 and 192 notches on their edges. The last octave of the organ is supposed to had 256 teeth but it was impossible to made a tonewheel with so much small notches so instead, the top half octave tonewheel is placed in the half-octave higher bins.  Generating the first half octaves of notes in the second half-octave bins produces the same frequencies with a tonewheel of 192 theet The tonewheels are placed in 48 different bins within the generator assembly.

Those of you who already saw a console Hammond organ like the B3, C3 or A-100 had surely this question in their head, why those organs had two switches to start the organ? The Run switch is the main one that run the synchronous motor that run all 96 tonewheels. At the time of the fabrication of those console organ, the synchronous motor couldn’t star by himself.  That’s why the Start, to get the synchronous motor to a speed or 60 Hz and after you  hit the Run switch . When you it the Start switch at first, you hear a grinding noise, it’s the synchronous motor taking it’s speed.  After 8 to 10 seconds, you hit the Run switch and then released the Start switch and you are ready to play.  Later spinets models like the L-100, M-100 and the M3 had a single starting switch, the technology of the synchronous motor had developped between the manufacturation of those console organs back in the 50's and the release of the spinets organs at the end of the 50's and the beginning of the 60's.

DRAWBARS AND PRESETS

After seeing the working of the Hammond organ internally, we will see how it work from the exterior, in other word, the drawbars and the presets keys.  A popular image in the Hammond organ mythology is an organ player shaping the sound of his beast by manipuling the drawbars on the organ.  When a drawbar is pushed all the way in, it’s off and when is pushed out, you go trought values between 1 and 8.  Those values determine the strenght of  specific harmonics or overtones in the organ sound. The console organ (B3,C3 and A-100) are represented by 4 groups of 9 drawbars. Those drawbars are colored, there are 4 whites, 3 whites and 2 browns drawbars.  Without entering too much in complicated organ terminology, those colors reflect the intervals of it’s associated harmonics.  Whites ones represented fundamental or octave, black are for non-octace intervals like 12th, 17th and 19th.  Brown ones manipulate sub-octave harmonics, an octave below the fundamental note.

Those of you who already saw a console Hammond organ remark on the left side of each manuals the presence of  reversed colors keys.  Those keys doesn’t play, they select the organ presets sound.  Those “reversed colors” keys work a bit like the preset buttons on a car radio, when you pressed a key, it released the previous selected keys.  Like the drawbars, they changed the strenght of specific harmonics. In other words, when you selected a specific preset keys, they are pre-determined or programmed drawbars settings.  Keys C to A of those reversed keys octave of preset settings called up drawbar setting that are wired within the organ.  In those cases, you can manipulate the 2 sets of drawbars associated with each manual.  The last 2 keys of the octave of preset keys (Bb and B) activate separately one or the other set of 9 drawbars associated with the manual where the preset is pressed. So, in those cases, only one set of drawbars is working.

PERCUSSION

One of the Hammond organ special features is the addition of percussion effect.  That effect was available only on later organs like the B3,C3,A-100,D-100,H-100 and RT-3 console models and some spinets models like L-100,M-100,M3 and T-100.  Earlier console organ models the A,B,C,B2,C2,RT,RT-2 and earlier spinet  models like the M and M2  did not feature the percussion effect.. That effect is activated when you press the B preset and work only in the upper manual.  The effect is controlled by 4 rocker switchs.The first one is an on/off switch that activate the effect. The volume switch control the loudness of the effect (normal or soft).  The decay switch control the speed of the effect sounding a bit like a marimba (fast) or sounding like a chime (slow).  The final switch control the pitch of the percussion effect, sounding a pitch above the fundamental (second) or an octave and a fifth above the fundamental (third). The effect work internally by coupling the second and third harmonic and that creates the “touch response” effect as it was originally called or percussion effect. The effect is desactivated when you hold a key long enough and only work when you play non-legato style of playing.

VIBRATO AND CHORUS

Earlier Hammond organs features tremolo effect rather than vibrato.  Some customers of those early organs complain to the company that the effect was not deep enough so the engineers of Hammond developped the vibrato effect. That vibrato effect is achieved by the addition of a scanner delay line vibrato line and was invented during WW II by Hammond head engineer, John Hanert.

When he developped the scanner delay line vibrato, John Harnett found that mixing the untreated drawbar signal, before the sound is affected by the vibrato effect with the “treated” vibrato effect produced a chorus effect. On the Hammond console organs models, you had the choice of vibrato effect or vibrato and chorus effect.  You select those effect and the intensity of the effect by a round rotary knob with the mention “Vibrato and Chorus” on it.  You can select with three levels of vibrato setting called V1,V2 and V3.  The Vibrato and chorus effect sound is available by selecting the C1,C2 and C3 settings.

SPRING REVERB 

One of the innovations made along with the invention of the Hammond organ is the released of the spring reverb.  At the time, before World war II, before the digital age, the only way to achieve that reverb effect is to create an acoustic environment to be able to create the effect.

It was Mr.Hammond himself that visualise that the ideal setting was to pass the sound through springs.  With early organs (pre-B3), those springs where about 3 feet and only fit in the vertical position in the organ.  In the 60's, the engineers of the Hammond company developped a much better, more compact device using very small springs. The spring reverb was available only on organs that had internal speakers like the A-100 and RT-3.  It was not available internally on organs like the B3 and C3 who don’t have internal speakers but was featured on Hammond tone cabinet, even Leslie speaker featured the Hammond patented spring reverb.That effect is activated with a round knob (similar to the vibrato-chorus knob) that graduate the amount of reverb  That spring reverb became a standard and was even featured on others instruments like the Mellotron M300.

SQUARE-FRONT KEYS

One of the cool feature on Hammond console organs is the square-front keys or “waterfall manuals”. Those keys are arranged in a stair-step fashion and finish flush with the edge of the wood of the manuals., a bit like the keys on an acoustic piano.  At first, it was to save money that the Hammond company produced those kind of keys but it was very appreciated by players, specially those who perform roll-off glissandos.  When Hammond released spinets organs, those organs featured overhanging keys wich are keys that goes beyond the edge of the manual, a bit like synthesizer keys.  The only spinet model featuring waterfall manuals is the M serie (M,M-2,M3).

PEDALBOARD

The pedalboard or bass pedals are often a neglicted feature on the Hammond organ but are very important.  The chuch pipe organ featured a 32 notes concave pedalboard.  Mr. Hammond went to observe those pipe organs and found that the varnish on those pedals was worn mainly on the first two octaves, so he decided to cut the the pedals to 25 pedals.  He also found that the concave pedalboard was very expensive to produce, so in a way to cut the production he decided to produce a flat pedalboard, wich became a standard in the organ business.  When spinets organs were produced, the pedalboard was once more cut down to 13 pedals.

THE KEY CLICK

This popular effect was considered , at is origin, as a defect.  The key click is the sound of a depressed key making contact with the key wire and making a percussive sound.  They tried to get rid of that “defect” but, as the years goes by, a lot of players like it and it becames a tademark sound.

Later, Hammond engineers found the way to eliminate the key click but the players came back and say , “Where’s the articulation?” and they reintroduced the key click on their organs.

CONCLUSION

As we seen it, the Hammond organ is not a simple instrument to describe and contain many feautures and components.  It’s the addition of those components that made this sound that we love so much. I mainly took the informations in the wonderful book “The Hammond organ-beauty in the B” by Mark Vail and try to simplify the too technical terminology in order to everyone (I hope!). To understand the working of the instrument.  For those interested in Hammond, I really recommended that book.  Thanks to Erik for the trust he gave me to write that part of the article and thanks to you for reading it.

THE LESLIE SPEAKER

 

 

Today, when we talk about the Hammond organ, a lot of people made the association with the Leslie speaker. The two inventions go in pair together but were made by two differents companies. This speaker was invented in 1940 by an ingenious inventor in California, Don Leslie, who worked the Barker departement store, who were one the first store to sold Hammond organs in California. Mr. Leslie then brought a Hammond organ but was expecting it to sound like a pipe organ but was dissapointed with the sound of Hammond speaker, so he decided to make his own. At first, he made a speaker based on Hammond own speaker but it wasn’t working right.  He realized that the sound of a pipe organ organ moves, as the different pipes were placed at different locations within the church, he wanted to create motions in the sound.  He then imagined the rotating speakers system. The system is simple, the signal of the Hammond organ enter the speaker and is passed to a 40 watts amplifier, then divided in two ways, the bass sound and the treble sound. The treble sound (higher frequencies) goes in the upper section of the cabinet and comes out from a 2 speed horn rotor that look like a double horn rotating in various speed. The bass sound goes in the bottom of the cabinet and goes out to a 15 inches stationnary speaker. In the bottom of the Leslie cabinet is a rotating 2 speed foam rotor by wich comes the the bass and midrange sounds. The two most popular Leslies models, the 122 model and 147 had 2 speed, the slow speed for chorus(chorale) and the tremolo at high speed that can be manipulated by the player with the half-moon switch, ordinary located in the left bottom side of the organ. That combination of those two sounds create the trademark Hammond organ sound that we all love.That effect is called the “Doppler effect”.