1937 Hammond NovaChord

[Glyder]

Pretty neat.

 

www.discretesynthesizers.com/Nova/intro.htm

[agedhorse]

Very cool!

[flanc]

What an incredible amount of work....but a very nice end finished piece.

[DDAY]

WOW I am completely blown away. Thats a lot of work. Great job

[Ear Abuser]

Talk about a labor of love- But, nothing sounds like a Hammond!

(Proud owner of a 1950's C2)

[agedhorse]

I owned an M3 for a while. I used to service the B's and C's

[ezstep]

I remember my first "decent" band had a "stripped down" B3 - and it still weighed 400 pounds or so (or it seemed like it!) It took all four of us to lift it in and out of the truck.

 

A few years later he traded it in on an M3.

[agedhorse]

Yeah, the B's were hardly "portable" except the solid state "Porta-B"

[The Real MC]

Porta-B is tube, not solid-state. Happy owner of one since 1981.

[agedhorse]

 

Originally posted by The Real MC Porta-B is tube, not solid-state. Happy owner of one since 1981.

 

It's been a very long time since I've seen/played one but if I recall correctly, it was like a chopped M-3 (maybe a slightly shorter keuyboard(s)) and I thought it was made in the late 60's and very early 70's. I don't remember if it was all tube or solid state but it may have been a hybrid. It was kind of their last attempt at survival as the organ market was just getting a glimse at the digital possibilities of the future, which is why Suzuki was ultimately interetsted in them and then bought them in the middle-late 70's (?).

 

A vey cool tone-wheel piece that was pretty successful considering the times.

 

Roland then came out with the VK-1 (?) which was one of the first successful attemts to recreate the tonewheel sound digitally.

 

I think a friend of mine still has a few various B's and C's in his shop.

[Ear Abuser]

The Chopped B3s where smaller but you didn't really make them much lighter- it was the tonewheels not the legs that made 'em heavy-

I just about lost a friend carrying my C2 down the basements steps- I'm pretty sure it's the heaviest thing he or I ever lifted.

[The Real MC]

 

Originally posted by agedhorse It's been a very long time since I've seen/played one but if I recall correctly, it was like a chopped M-3 (maybe a slightly shorter keuyboard(s)) and I thought it was made in the late 60's and very early 70's. I don't remember if it was all tube or solid state but it may have been a hybrid. It was kind of their last attempt at survival as the organ market was just getting a glimse at the digital possibilities of the future, which is why Suzuki was ultimately interetsted in them and then bought them in the middle-late 70's (?). A vey cool tone-wheel piece that was pretty successful considering the times.

 

 

Chopped up L-100 actually. The sole transistor is used in the percussion keying circuit. Big omission is lack of scanner vibrato, Porta-B/L-100 was electronic phase shift circuit. But Porta-B had all 91 tonewheels wired in, the only spinet done like this. Mine just happens to sound really good, it screams for R&B and Rawk. Very cool tonewheel organ as long as you're not playing jazz on it.

 

The tonewheels aren't the only heavy item in a chopped B-3. Those manuals are heavy too, over 100 lbs. And unless you're using a dense multipin for the 91+ wires between the TG and the manuals, you have to have both the TG and manuals in the same case.

[agedhorse]

Shows you how foggy my memory is. I do however remember clearly how heavy all of the product was. Gut un-zipping at best.

[Scodiddly]

Originally posted by The Real MC Big omission is lack of scanner vibrato, Porta-B/L-100 was electronic phase shift circuit.

Well, yeah - the vibrato scanner was another few pounds of gears and such.

 

But Porta-B had all 91 tonewheels wired in, the only spinet done like this. Mine just happens to sound really good, it screams for R&B and Rawk. Very cool tonewheel organ as long as you're not playing jazz on it.

 

There are some interesting stories in the various tonewheel schemes used in different models. One of my prized old obscure binders is full of Hammond service manuals, and they did all sorts of interesting things. They even had some "complex" tonewheels with non-sinewave patterns for the bass pedals. And the RT-3 had a monophonic synth for the "pedal solo" unit.