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Hammond Historians, what model is this?


bruto

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Quote Originally Posted by piano39 View Post
Hammond S6 Chord Organ.

Did not use tone wheels.
Thank You! No tone wheels means that I'm not camping on their lawn Thursday night.

I thought that it might have been a Novachord or something similar.

Again, thanks.
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Hammond model M.

Pros: tonewheels, scanner vibrato/chorus, waterfall keys, sounds great through a Leslie, lots of pure Hammond mojo.

Cons: no harmonic percussion, no presets, vibrato is non-selective (on or off for both manuals at once, not split), sounds meh without a Leslie, 250 lbs, at least 60 years old, so probably gonna need a cap or two...

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The chord organ is a very very distant descent of the Novachord, if it makes you feel any better.

That Northern Hammond model M -- I offered to take it away for them a number of month ago, but they want money for it. I would gig it if I could get it working right -- I'm not using percussion at all on my L100 in my current band. Just not my style, unless playing something like AWSOP or Child In Time.

piano39, how do you differentiate the S6 from the earlier models?

Here is a Hammond Chord Organ played by a pro, side-by-side with a B3:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE6ay6u96n4

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Quote Originally Posted by bruto View Post
It looks pretty old, and it goes on sale Friday at a yard sale.
How timely is this post? My bass player has one and I just did some research on it yesterday for him! It's an S-6 and there was one on EBAY yesterday for $125 with a BIN of $159. Probably worth under $100. I played it Saturday night. Doesn't have the B3 sound at all. Actually sounded horrible. I'd pass on it.

From the theatre organs site:

S6 Chord Organ
Synopsis: Autochording organ.
Manuals: One 37 note manual.
Features: Three sections: Solo unit, Chord unit and Bass unit with seperate volume controls. Solo unit is monophonic and driven from the keyboard, taking the highest key pressed, the chord unit is driven from tabs which has one oscillatoe for each group of two or three keys, preferring the lowest one, and two pedals to play the bass notes; one for the tonic and the other the fifth of the current chord. Very difficult to keep in tune. Two internal speakers.
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Quote Originally Posted by delaware dave

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and two pedals to play the bass notes; one for the tonic and the other the fifth of the current chord.

 

Wow, that's a pretty unique feature. I've seen one of those IRL, unplugged, probably didn't work, and didn't even think about the pedals. Are there any other organs with this type of bass pedals?
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Quote Originally Posted by wesg View Post
The chord organ is a very very distant descent of the Novachord, if it makes you feel any better.
Yea you're right. I found the schematics: http://users.rcn.com/clonk/ChordOrga...ics/index.html

It has 16 individual note + 6 chord oscillator tone circuits followed by frequency divider networks. It has somewhere between 300 and 400 hundred capacitors all prone to leakage after 55+ years. There are 29 vacuum tubes, mostly 12AU7s, six 12BH7s, and two 6V6s in the power amp section.

Very interesting design with the tube oscillators and frequency dividers. I could envision a few mods, namely filters and controllable envelope generators, that would put this closer to the Novachord. Then again, as the tone generators are designed to sound like they do, I don't think it would change much.
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Quote Originally Posted by mate_stubb View Post
You can find M-3s (same as M but with percussion) here in the midwest for $50-$100. It's pretty much the only spinet worth buying IMO.

A model M would be worth taking if it was free(ish) and working.
I like the M-100 series quite a bit, too. Downside is diving board keys, but the vibrato celeste can add interesting flavors and the twin 12's and separate 8" reverb speaker give it a fuller sound if you have to play the thing without a Leslie. Fixing up a '65-ish redcap M-111 as we speak...particularly-good sounding specimen, this one. Threw it into full-on old-lady-with-blue-hair mode (full normal vibrato, both reverb tabs down, mostly white drawbars emphasized) and tore into Lawrence of Arabia...fun! :-D She'll make someone a dandy first Hammond.

TP
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