--- In
motm@egroups.com, elhardt@a... wrote:
> improv@p... writes:
>
> >>I too am a recent recipient of an organ transplant: a few weeks
ago I was
> given a Hammond M3, 1957 vintage spinet-style tonewheel organ.<<
>
> My family inheritted an M103 with a Leslie when my grandfather died
when I
> was young. But those little spinet models just don't seem to have
the heavy
> full sound of a B3 as far as I can remember. So it might not be a
real close
> comparison.
Now you're on MY turf<g>! The M-3 is regarded as being the BEST
spinet to have, if you can't have a console. It has all the right
guts, a true vibrato scanner like the consoles (the L-100 series does
NOT), the "waterfall" style keys like the big boys, percussion, and
no extra frills.
The differences: shorter keyboards and less pedals, of course; fewer
drawbars on the lower manual; and the upper drawbar tones don't "fold
back" down to lower pitches as you play higher on the keyboard, they
just go silent. This last difference is the main audible one. If you
play in the top octaves of the top keyboard, with a sound having lots
of upper drawbars pulled out, the M-3 (and all spinets) will sound
somewhat duller than a console such as a B-3, C-3, or A-100. But if
you play 888000000, you won't hear much of a difference at all. Some
fanatics have rewired their keyboard manuals with the extra contacts
necessary to recreate the console foldback.
Moe