MOTM

When stuffing my 320 LFO boards I found myself annoyed by amount of time the 
resistors took.  I now have a whole different perspective on electronic kit 
building after buying this used humongus mega-organ that was built from a kit:

http://members.aol.com/elhardt/images/galaxy.jpg

It came with a 4 inch stack of 27 manuals and booklets full of schematics, 
parts lists, PCB layouts and assembly instructions.  The 320 now looks like 
heaven now.

Funny note:  I received the thing today, plugged it in without the speackers 
connected just so I could see all the pretty lights come on.  I engaged all 
the buttons on the right of the keyboard so they were all lit.  It was like 
Christmas.  I ran upstairs for a minute to get my digital camera to take a 
photo, but when I came back downstairs the organ was dead.  It blew two 4 amp 
fuses.  Before I could even hear it produce a single note I had to drive to 
Radio Shack for fuses.  I have now learned not to turn all the buttons on at 
the same time, and this is a good example of how much current all those damn 
LEDs draw.

-Elhardt

>
>When stuffing my 320 LFO boards I found myself annoyed by amount of time the
>resistors took.  I now have a whole different perspective on electronic kit
>building after buying this used humongus mega-organ that was built from a kit:
>
>http://members.aol.com/elhardt/images/galaxy.jpg

Wow, what a beauty! Even if it doesn't make a sound, the flashing lights
oughta be worth whatever you paid! Man, that just looks like a totally
crazy instrument. Would love to hear what it sounds like!

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. I'd never
really considered owning a real Hammond before, B3's have always been way
out of my means. This was given to a friend by his grandmother, and, since
he never plays it and wants to refinish the floor underneath it, he gave it
to me. I'm really REALLY digging this organ, it's making me pull out my
Larry Young records for licks!

____________________________________________
Dave Trenkel : improv@...
Minus Web Site: http://listen.to/minusmusic
Minus MP3's: http://www.mp3.com/-minus-
____________________________________________

improv@... writes:

>>Wow, what a beauty! Even if it doesn't make a sound, the flashing lights
 oughta be worth whatever you paid! Man, that just looks like a totally
 crazy instrument. Would love to hear what it sounds like!<<

I have to admit, I bought it almost as much for its impressive looks as for 
its sound.  Back in the late 70s early 80s when they were in production, a 
factory built one cost more than $40,000.  I picked this one up for $2500.  
It is a crazy instrument.  In fact it is quite hard to understand a lot of 
it.  I seems that everything affects everything else.  You can push a switch 
and hear no change in sound, but that is because you have to enable about 3 
other things and pull out a drawbar to hear the change.

>>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.

-Elhardt

--- 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