Another bizarre question

[gstopp at fibermux.com]

     My first synthesizer keyboard was stolen from a Hammond Chord Organ! 
     The manual has both polyphonic tones plus a couple high-note priority 
     monophonic voices (called "solo", I think...). The chord buttons 
     provided chord drones which you would hold while you played the melody 
     on the keyboard. Very cheesey. Sounded great with massive distortion 
     (tube of course). Run the speaker output into a guitar amp input. No 
     guarantees that nothing will get fried....
     
     The keyboard when removed provides four contacts per key, if I 
     remember correctly. A four-contact keyboard is quite a rare thing, so 
     keep that in mind when plotting your evil projects. If I were to build 
     an interface for it, I'd go the digital scanning route since the 
     contacts are large flappy copper strips which may be prone to contact 
     bounce. I had bad luck with an analog sample/hold circuit with this 
     keyboard until I turned to the digital approach which cleaned 
     everything up. 
     
     As an organ it's not worth much - the tonewheel organs are quite 
     desireable but this thing is a POS. Unless it's in mint shape it's 
     probably OK to trash it. My opinions of course.
     
     And save those tubes! $$$$$$$
     
     - Gene
     gstopp at fibermux.com


______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Another bizarre question
Author:  foxx at airmail.net at ccrelayout
Date:    4/9/97 7:33 PM


On the way home from work today, I noticed a Hammond Chord Organ that 
someone threw out on the side of the road... I said to myself, "self, you 
might be able to use that 3 octave keyboard for your synth project!" so I 
stopped and removed the guts from the cabinet. 
Looking at the way this thing is put together, maybe I should take it 
back out where I found it! No, seriously, am I correct in assuming that 
this unit had a monophonic keyboard with chords being generated from the 
funky little buttons on the left? (I have some evil thoughts for the 
chord buttons, too...) What would be the best way to approach getting 
this relic to deliver control voltage? Any ideas would be appreciated.
     
By the way, if anyone needs tubes, I grabbed all those, too!
the survivors are, 2-6V6GT's, 1-6C4, 1-6BJ7, 3-12BH7A, 2-6BA6 and 
14-12AU7A's