Oh, how I used to love the organ store as a kid! Of course, the organ store salesmen took a dim view of kids messing around with the devices so I didn't get to play much.
When I was a a Kid, the local mall had both a Lowery dealership and Sherman & Clay (a Kimball Dealership). Both of these faded and one called Colton (they sold Technics Organs and Schafer & Sons pianos) all these are gone now.
There was a Hammond organ store in the JCRS shopping mall Lakewood Colorado that a friend and I would go into. He would sit down to play and one or two people would want to stop him. But as soon as he would start to play they would stop dead in their tracks. Floyd W. if you see this I hope you are doing well. Charlie.
That "angry" crackling you hear is from the instrument, more specifically the speakers, being in a moist environment. The same thing happened to my 1973 Yamaha organ back in the early 1980s when we moved it into the basement. Once back upstairs, the crackling stopped.
I have the exact same organ (almost) sitting 20 feet from me as I type this. Electronically, the Concorde was a great design...mechanically not so much. First, that constructed all the electronic (PC) boards out of phenolic. Over time they warp and so when inserted into rigid inline edge connector sockets, some of the edge contacts....do not make contact and this can cause a lot of random problems. Boards made out of glass epoxy, while slightly more expensive, do not have this problem. No one uses phenolic anymore. Cleaning the contacts will not solve this problem, but will help the ones that are still making contact. Hammond used the best capacitors available at the time they designed the organ...late 60's. The only ones that I have seen fail are the power supply electrolytics as they do with age in all electronics. When they are leaky, they typically cause hum..not static. The tone wheel organs had a bunch of "orange drop" caps in the tone wheel assembly that have to eventually be replaced also as they drift in value with age. The IC's in the Concorde were custom designed by Mostek .. a Texas company that also made the parts for the first electronic calculator and many other things. Very new technology in the 60's and probably .. counting their design cost as it was unique to the Concorde .. was half the cost of the organ for Hammond as everything else is discrete parts and common ... still available today. I designed electronics for a living and am now retired with time so fixing these problems became a challenge for me. ;) When I bought the organ in the early 70's they gave me the service manual so I had all the electronic info. I relaid out all the boards in glass epoxy, combined some circuits onto fewer boards (there were a lot of boards!) as smaller and better parts are available today, and ... because engineers can't resist "fixing things" .. changed a few circuits including the power supply which was ... a mess. The original "unobtainium" IC"s were carefully removed from the original boards and installed in sockets in the new ones. So now when I turn it on, I can count on no problems. I hope! A fun almost year long project, but glad I didn't have to pay for the labor! I've seem the custom IC's being sold on the web for 200 dollars each ... and there are 45 of them, so if you find a Concorde cheap, carefully remove the IC's from the boards, and then throw the rest of the organ away you could make some real bucks! Hammond designed and sold several other "IC" organs after the Concorde including the Elegante in the early 80's. Between their design cost and the fact that people were not buying home organs any more, it probably put them out of business. Jim
Cool project! I’ve done a similar sort of project on my Soundcraft 2400. The original PC boards were FR4 but single sided. So many pads lifted from the leverage of especially the TT patchbay jacks but also some of the switches. I’ve redone most of the board in double sided FR4 with very generous pad sizes on both top and bottom, and it is now very reliable. Some of these ‘disasters’ can be cool projects when you are an engineer or technician.
I came across one of these back in the mid 90's when I had a business fixing organs . These were almost impossible to repair due to the custom chips you described and the warped boards were a nightmare. Cudos for fixing yours that's a labour of love. I have an L111 which is much simpler and through my Leslie 147 RV it sounds like a Hammond should.
I hope you also took the time to think adding a feature to your new glass epoxy PCBs !!!..... yes ADDING A MIDI RETROFIT TO IT....OF COURSE, IF YOU BELIEVE IT CAN BE DONE !! THAT WOULD BE AWESOME AND EVEN NOT HAVING TOUCH SENSITIVITY IT ADDS A LOT SPECIALLY IF YOU PLAY VIRTUAL SYNTHS LIKE THE B4 II by Native Instruments Plugin.....but now it is discontinued ! There are other Virt Inst brands to find Hammond like sounds ! Please post comment if you think you will add that and add your video working MIDI with your Concorde !! Thanks ps. sorry 4 the caps, the caps key got stuck !
I found a B3 with the Leslie for $300 at a garage sale last year. Needless to say, it is in my living room at the moment. The classics never go out of style.
Last winter my wife and I were thrift store shopping over near Pittsburgh and we wandered into a Goodwill store. There was a Hammond M3 Tonewheel organ sitting in the furniture section. It looked like new except for a recent scratch likely acquired in the donation pickup. The store clerk said that it was being sold as a furniture item and it could not be tested or even plugged in due to its age and lack of a modern 3 prong power plug. It would not fit in my car, but I paid the asking price and was given 48 hours to pick it up or forfeit my money. Of course it was snowing when I set out to pick up the organ, but the guy unloading the donation truck helped me stuff the 250 pound beast into my Honda Element.....it barely fit. This M3 turns out to be from 1958. The original purchase receipt was in the bench, as was a receipt for $200 worth of servicing from just over a year prior. Seeing that, I decided to forgo the usual teardown needed for vintage electronics, and plug it in. To my surprise, it plays perfectly with no hum and all functions work. It's still going great 9 months on. The purchase price.......$39.95. It cost me more in gasoline to make the two 70 mile (each way) trips to get it.
I used to play an ARP Odyssey back in the 70's, but never had a tonewheel Hammond or room for one. I was surprised to see it at a Goodwill store for cheap, and couldn't pass it up. I can't play like I did nearly 50 years ago, but still try. My daughter plays well and maybe one of her kids will get it somewhere down the road.
I forgot to mention, the tabs/switches above the drawbars on the left side (blue, white, tan, pink, yellow, red) may work perfectly. James didn't realize you have to have the first of the black preset keys (immediately to the left of the white/black regular keys) depressed to activate these sounds. They can be combined with one set of the drawbars. It's an easy mistake to make. The piano solo tab overrides anything on the upper manual when depressed. Aso, these colored tabs have a 2nd voice that is activated by depressing another tab at the far right side of the tabs called "second voice". It changes the "plunk" on the harpsicord into a violin, other sounds in to saxophones, or trumpets, etc. When you use the violin with a Vibrato, it's hard to tell from a real violin. Lots of cool stuff on there if you know how to turn it on.
Wow! This brings back memories. It was in 1973 when this model showed up at First Glorious Church on Arthur Avenue in The Bronx. That's the church my mother's first cousin and her husband founded in the late 1950's. Forty-five years later, it's still in the building. It was relocated from the sanctuary to the third floor grand dining hall....and it still works.
Very interesting and even surprising to see such a young guy who obviously has a good knowledge of what is an amazing instrument (in the right hands of course) Hammond's possessed a particular 'SOUND' if anyone has over looked (not heard this sound) Dig out any Booker T especially Time Is Tight. No matter how many times I hear this number, I can listen all day to it. Thank You James,You are a star!.
i really miss the organ days, back when every respectable department store had a music section with organs in it. as a little kit i'd make a beeline for the organs, joyously flupping the multicolored stoptabs and pushing buttons and twiddling knobs etc. i really loved the 2&2/3 nazard, the 2" fife and 1" piccolo stops, but the other people found them piercing and frowned at me. they shoulda been happy i never messed with the post horn.
Loved the organ and the demonstration. Always had an interest in organs and keyboards, although I cannot play anything, just make noise. We found a very nice, completely functional A-100 (a B3 but with built in amp and speakers!) for $500 at a church that had used it very little and then obtained a pipe organ. The thing really wails. It is extremely heavy, it took four of us to get it into the house without breaking anything. There are great deals out there. I still have my dad's Schober Theater Organ, which he made from a kit, even stained and finished the wood cabinet.
I repaired a similar model Hammond for a relative in the '80's. If I am not mistaken the one feature I did not see you explain is the brass switched capacitance touch plate on the lower left manual that can be used (when set to "on") to set tempo and start a previously selected percussion rhythm automation by tapping the plate 1-2-3-4 (HAMMOND TOUCH TEMPO) Great Video.
Amazing! I have almost the exact same Hammond Concorde organ (this model is the 2312M). The only real difference is that mine has the piston preset buttons located above the upper keyboard instead of on the left side of the keyboards (that's what the reversed black and white keys are on the model here). I bought mine used in 1981 in Montgomery, AL, for about $1800, if my memory serves me well. I still have this organ but just like this one, it suffers from hisses and pops as well as power supply problems (the organ sometimes just shuts off by itself). I thought it about finding someone to repair it, but after reading the comments here about the phenolic circuit boards and expensive ICs, I don't think it would make sense. While I'm pretty handy with fixing things, I don't think I want to take on the challenge of making all the repairs myself. (Maybe I should take out the ICs and sell them as someone here suggested and then trash the organ. Not sure I could bring myself to do that, though!) My wife wants me to get rid of this organ but it has sentimental value to me. I grew up in Miami, FL, with a Lowery spinet organ and later a Yamaha console organ in that was really junky compared to this Hammond. I wish they still made console organs like this. There's just something special about playing these, with all the bells and whistles, compared to a synthesizer. I, too, remember the organ/piano stores in the shopping malls. When I was a teenager, used to love going to the mall with my friends and then sitting down and playing a mall store console organ and waiting for a salesman to throw me out, only for him to do an about-face once he discovered I knew what I was doing and was a pretty good young organist. Then they would try to sell me one! (Very expensive back then.) If anyone here knows how to change the music rack light bulbs, please let me know. I know how to open the top of the organ but I can't for the life of me figure out how to get the translucent cover off the light to change a couple of the bulbs that are burned out. Thank you so much for posting this video and thanks for all those who commented!
These are completely solid state. No tonewheels and no tubes. I had an R-100, which is similar to this, and it seems 90% of the electronic gremlins on these are due to the 'edge-cards' they used to house the components. These individual boards plug into a bus, much the same as computer graphics and sound cards plug into a motherboard. The contacts get corroded over the years, and it's a pretty simple (but time consuming) job to pull all the cards and clean up the edge contacts with fine steel wool and some electronics spray. The spray also works well for any tab switches and potentiometers. ...and yes, the swell pedal should function for both the normal speaker, and the Leslie. There should be dual 'pots' on the pedal assembly that control both sides.😉 Hope you got it straightened out.😁
In the 60's, there were probably more piano & organ showrooms than guitar centers, and I drooled over organs at every store in my hometown. Organ makers were starting to add beat boxes and percussive tabs like banjo and piano. They sounded somewhat cheesy, but gave organists more options. Bass & cymbal on the pedals and snare & cymbal on the lower is borrowed from the traps in theatre/pipe organ - it works great in om-pah music. Hammond followed the new trends fairly quickly. And at that point, there had to be a speaker with a moving baffle to use the Leslie name; remember they were 2 separate companies. We have a similar Hammond at church but without the chrome pedals. That sleek look may have been copied from the the top of the line Yamaha Electone - everyone said it looked like a refrigerator. Finally, there are published copyrighted versions of “House of the Rising Sun” but the song itself actually predates copyright law. Thanks for the video.
Yes, but the version I played was from the Animals, and that version is copyrighted. I am in the process of writing a new arrangement for House of the Rising Sun, and it's coming out very nicely. It will have the same words as always as they are not copyrighted, it is not known who wrote the words, and so no copyright on them.
I have one of these. I'm in the Indianapolis area and would be interested in finding it a home. My Dad bought it for my Mom in early 70,s. I'm sure it needs work and believe my Son had it playing 15 yrs ago. Grand kids loved flipping the tabs up n down. "Fascination" was the only song my Dad could play on it. He could make the chills go thru you. My Mom could really get it going.
Believe it or not, the first organ I ever saw in someone's home was that particular model with all those lighted switches on top. How could I ever forget it? Late 1970s or circa 1980. I love the look and sound.
Thanks for the video. I recently acquired a Hammond H-100 and had no idea that a tone wheel generator was a thing that existed. This thing is so complicated! The inside was pretty clean, though all the galvanized bits had gray fur. I replaced the power supply filter caps with Sprague axials (and relocated them offboard), the power cord, and the 5AR4 rectifier tubes, added a 4A breaker switch, tested/cleaned/reinstalled all the tubes, replaced the 7591s with 2 new 7591A tubes, used my fingernail to gradually loosen a frozen section in the clockwork toner generator until the motor would spin it without help, added new oil, sprayed WD-40 from underneath to get rid of all the residual bearing noise, disconnected/cleaned/reconnected all the major accessible wiring connectors, etc. It seems to mostly work! There is more hum & hiss than there should be but I just obtained an original service manual, so I hope that will help chase those issues down. It seems a few of the drawbars do not appear to work and I understand that there is a way to shift the bus-bar and wipe the contacts and/or give them new contact surfaces. Any suggestions are welcome! Oh, I do not play the keyboards and my prior relevant experience is limited to tube guitar amps and effects and being mechanically intuitive.
@@ward9457 ..or you can still buy the recommended tone-wheel generator oil on Amazon, believe it or not! www.amazon.com/dp/B00F8EYHL6/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_gq7HEbTCKQ42N
That my friends is a Hammond Concorde. It was the 2nd generation of the same name, the first was from the early 1970's. This one dates to about 1978. It was their best model at the time, and sold for about $10K (in 1978 dollars). It featured a new "gadget" called "touch tempo" (the gold plate on the right side panel - lower keyboard) whereby you could tap in your tempo (4x) and the organ would match that tempo.
Believe or not I have one in my living room in Little River, SC. Most of it works well. I think I paid about $1300.00 for it 15 or 20 years ago. Just about impossible to have it serviced.
Non tone wheel hammonds are worth about that if they work perfectly. If you want to do some DIY troubleshooting for fun have at it, but otherwise I wouldn't put much money into it. Get a service manual. There is an organization for organ techs called MITA, but be advised they are not very DIY friendly. You will need a scope and some decent soldering skills to work on these, and a bench with a good supply and some fixturing helps a lot.
That is one of several Hammond models that came out after the H-100 series and with features derived from the X-100, perhaps the finest Hammond electric organ ever made. The point of this model is to combine the full hammond drawbar system with percussion, vibrato, and so forth PLUS the tab section which adds the transistor organ and related sounds. That gives you great string, reed, and other sounds to combine with the Hammond sound. There are a lot of good miscellaneous percussion effects.There are a lot of cool things you can do if the organ is in full operating condition. It sounds like yours needs repair. The problem is finding parts AND a repair person that can help you. I prefer the current Hammond SK-1 and XK-3 with good synthesizers on the side. I wish you the best!
I bought a Hammond X77 and X77 Leslie amplifier. Both of them were very heavy for sure. I bought them for $100.00. I paid my Nephew $200.00 to use his truck and help me get it home. After a month or so I put them up for sale and got $600.00. He came with rented truck and paid a friend of mine $50.00 to help load it. He had wanted one like that with the matching Leslie. He could play like crazy and happy to find them. I can't play but because I love the sound of them I wanted to get one to play around with.
Looks exactly like a Hammond I used to play in church back in the 70s. Except it didn't have any of the rhythm buttons. Nice piece, but I just wonder if you can find parts or anyone to work on it.
This is a Concorde organ. It was introduced around 1974 if my memory serves me right. I was a Hammond Organ Service tech. I could work 7 days a week 24 hours a day on service calls, that how large the organ sales were. The Concorde did have a small rotating drum when it first came out and that was the leslie speaker. The pedal sustain switch on the foot pedal was used to cancel the sustain when you pushed the foot switch. The tabs not working just need cleaning and some silicon grease. THis would be great to have. I still have my spinet T-500 which is smaller than the concorde which was call a Console Organ.
I just picked up THREE Hammond X-66 s. Out of 3 hopefully I can get ONE good one out of it. Also got 3 Tone Cabs out of it. ALL FREE. I gave one to a church already because they have 2 (not working). One has been shipped to San Diego to a guy who actually enjoys fixing them. Anyway, my Twin bro and I now have matching Hammonds and someday will get them working. Also have a ancient hammond Collonade working. Great Vids. And Great Skills, Young Man.
Bad LSI (Large Scale Integration) design that failed miserably. They were sending out techs constantly. It was trying to make the whole organ with capacitors. There are a ton of bad caps in there and it would be insanely time consuming and expensive to restore. I have repaired Hammond organs for a living for 3 decades. This is a piece of junk. Stick with the 3 series organs (includes generator, scanner and percussion same as on B3) : B3, C3, A100 and RT3 with either a 122/142 or 147/145 type Leslie. Anything else is just useless.
My Concorde is almost 60 years old and had two bad caps. Caps were not the problem with the Concorde and neither were the LSI parts. Mechanical contacts were the major problem.
I couldn't possibly disagree. While those are of course great models, I've found pretty much any Hammond with a tonewheel generator to have plenty of worth. Of course the 3's have more features than their predecessors, making them better by comparison, but they're all good in my opinion. The L and T series sound great (Keith Emerson used them!!), and having had an H-324 for about ten years now, I have a particular fondness for the insane amount of features that the H series has, in addition to the fact that it has more drawbar harmonics than any other model. Never had many issues with it either, and the few issues I have had I was able to fix with a little troubleshooting and some good ol' persistence, and I HAVEN'T been working on organs for 3 decades for a living. I promise you, that played through a Leslie, 99.999% of people couldn't tell the difference between my H-324 and a B3 proper. And while we're on lesser mentioned models, lest we not forget the gorgeous work of art that is the Hammond X66, which seems to retain pretty good value, and has quite a cult following of it's own. Definitely very different sounding, but that's part of it's charm. Will say though, I'm glad you Hammond purists find all these magnificent organs to be useless. It just means I can pick them up for little to nothing.
@ Chris Nowak: you can say that because of your professional expertise in the filed ... for someone like me in love with organs in general and crazy about Hammonds in particular, i'd keep this 'thing' especially at such a low price even if it doesn't work! just listen to its sounds ... it's still quite fine in its own rights even at its present shape! me wanteth bad! :-)
@ @@UMAMIMAMU : couldn't agree more! i played with a Yamaha YC20 equipped with its own dedicated Yamaha Leslie-style amp (a very good one btw!) in the 1970s for some time and you couldn't tell the difference between that combo and a great Hammond organ + an original Leslie either ... and i'm not a pro musician really! at the same time i also heard others play the same Yamaha and amp combo professionally and they made great Hammond-like sounds indeed ... however, Hammond is always a different thing as it started the trend and owning one is kind of like an honor thingy for me! love them all anyway but Hammond is in a class of its own ... speaking of Yamaha electronic organs and its own rotary speaker-amps, just check out the super-futuristic white color fiberglass-body Yamaha X68 of 1968 and then its few next in line models in the 1970s and maybe later ... they're superb instruments in both performance AND advanced capabilities plus that magical super high-tech looks rivaling the Hammond and all other great names in the industry such as the Lowrey or even latest 'space-ship' models by Versi and others today ...
I am from Colombia South America, this organs were very popular here from the 50s into the early 90s. I own one of those Concorde the limited edition with lid. Love this things
I have the nearly exact same organ, yours looks a bit newer, mine has a cassette recorder and clear plexiglass music rack. I just got done rebuilding it, and everything now works except the light for the pedals (don't look at them anyway). Replaced all the large electrolytic capacitors, many power transistors, one little diode it the power amp that caused the voice coil in the 15" speaker to burn out (replaced), and cleaned up and lubed the Leslie. Sounds good now. It was built in 1975. The instructions, schematics and pictures are online. Just google Hammond Concorde Service Manual. You can get a free PDF manual. Previous organ was Hammond H-100 with A-10 tone cabinet, sold to a church. Tom Miller, Phoenix, AZ.
Tom .. Mine is the early version also. Agree on the power supply. In addition to the caps, mine also had poor connections between the ground lug on several multi-lug terminal strips and the chassis causing hum. Also, due to aging of the resistor bias networks, the power amps were drawing to much idle current .. thus running too hot. Glad to hear others are getting these older organs going! Jim
I see these vintage Hammonds and other brands at thrift stores and EstateSales quite often and always cheap. If someone has some technical background and can fix them, they are a good deal. Finding a technician that can fix them is hard.
There's a possibility that I may have played this very same model of organ around 25-30 years ago. I do seem to remember it being a souped up Hammond organ. I think I remember really pushing the "speed limit" on that organ with some very fast playing, including possibly hitting keys repeatedly like a mandolin effect or doing some very fast fiddle-like effect. I do remember that it was NOT your average Hammond organ. Yes, I agree with HisXLNC below about organ stores inside of malls. I miss those days! The Ohio Valley Mall in St. Clairsville, OH had TWO such stores. Now they have ZERO. Anyway, may God's peace be with ya--in the name of Jesus! From a fellow organist and musician, John Nozum
As a Hammond organ service technician back in the sixties and seventies, I’ve encountered that noise problem before. It is likely caused by a diode in the power supply called a Zener diode, or avalanche breakdown diode, used as a voltage regulator. I’m sure they are still available, but you would need to know it’s specifications before replacing it. A service manual schematic would be immensely helpful, and I’m sure any tech that knows amplifiers and power supplies could find and replace the offending component. Good luck, and I think you got the deal of the century if you can get it repaired
Great tip. I advise to also replace all the capacitors in the same power supply. Furthermore cleaning all multiconnectors will often help, for instance to get the missing poly presets back. Loads of great old organs are begging for this kind of treatment before it is too late. Do however not postpone such jobs too long after starting to use them again. Otherwise the (re)new(ed) freindships might not last long.
It's a Hammond Concorde. I had a 1971 Concorde, it was the stage model, which was black and had a white leather seat, chrome pedals, there are a few differences from the one you found here, this one I think must be just a little bit older than mine was. Mine didn't have the ABCD tabs on the top right, and the tempo section was set up better. I miss it to this day, haven't been able to find another one like it. Yes, I think that you found a steal!
This organ is the Hammond Concord. I call it the organ of the 70s. The first time I saw this organ was at a church in Columbus, Ohio and I thought it was the neatest thing with the silver pedals. In the 80s Hammond came out with the Hammond Elegante which is the organ of the 80s. Hammond Concords and Elegantes have similar sounds and extras.
Just guessing but I’m thinking the shiny pedals are actual wood with plastic caps to protect the wood, thus the plastic makes them look that way. Right?
Those organs are notorious for having quirks and noises due to bad connections on various circuit boards. They can usually be cured by removing the connectors, cleaning them and readjust the prong to make a tighter fit at the circuit boards. There is actually a rotosonic Leslie built in the organ itself. It’s different than low rotor that you’ll find in a standard Leslie because there’s a 6x9 speaker in the drum itself. I tend to like these in a Leslie better because it has a stronger tremolo than a standard rotor with a woofer on top. The other reason is that rotosonic Leslie take longer to accelerate and decelerate than a traditional Leslie. There’s my rant about this Hammond Concord.
shawnr26 Ive got this old one , it's called a Lowery, with two levels of keys with your level with more sound controls! its been with my mom for years, I tried to get it up an going, but no luck. I took the back off and looked at everything while it was plugged in, but nothing was running or humming. the power cord went to a big transformer, but could'nt tell if anything was on , any ideals what to do or is it junk?
If I had to guess, the noise was from the Lesly(sp) speaker. While I was in Ohio in the 72 time frame I would rebuild the scanner in about one or two hours instead of sending it back to Hammond. I never worked on this model.
Organs are sort of like typewriters. Nobody sells them anymore, few people still use them, and nobody repairs them or if they do it can be very expensive. Millions were sold, but someone told me that there is only one typewriter "fixer" left in San Francisco. If you like old organs, you have to be prepared to do simple troubleshooting and fixes yourself (or pay a lot of money). Naturally the B series organs are easier to fix as they have few connectors (if any) and only a few tubes ... and a lot less voices and features. However, as long as they are in demand and available (at some expensive price) there will be fixers. I don't understand the argument about the Concorde and later Hammond's weight. They have built in power amps and speakers and weigh about the same as a B3 which has none and requires an external tone cabinet. Organs are heavy! All the electronics in the Concorde including the keyboards probably weights....maybe 20 pounds. The Concorde has about 80 PC cards ... some of which are duplicates .. and maybe 3-400 feet of wiring ... not miles. I know because in replacing the phenolic boards, I replaced the wiring because the new connectors were different. Lots of short wires and connectors though! When it's fixed and working correctly, I think the Concorde and the later Elegante have a great sound, but I am at best a beginning organ player so I will leave the sound comparison between the LSI organs and the town wheel guys to the experts. The new Hammond Suzuki company has made two (3?) attempts to replicate the B3 sound using the latest electronics and the experts say they are not there yet. I think the problem is they can easily duplicate the tone sounds ... just not the defect sounds such as magnetic coupling in the townwheel pickups, foldover of the upper octave notes, key clicks, octave sounds coming in at different times depending on key force, and others which are all part of the B3 sound. Hammond fixed these defects in the Concorde and later organs, but maybe they were part of the "Hammond Sound" that people liked. Jim
@ techy5025: another great and well-put comment from you sir! good points also about the 'modern' Hammond-Suzuki thing and its great yet still lagging sound quality when compared to an original Hammond B3 ... yes, emulating the sound of an acoustic instrument such as the piano or guitar or violin etc via sampling tricks is NEVER the same as the original just when a synthetically made taste of orange or other fruits is never the same as the natural ones, is it? in case of the Hammond organs sounds, which was electronically produced already yet in an 'analog' manner, there were also a lot of mechanics and 'acoustics' involved as well, making it more like a fully accoustic instrument in comparison to present day 'digitally' emulated or simulated electronic instruments ... (compare that to photographs or movies made using film emulsion vs still or video cameras with a digital sensor ... true pros in the business still seek film and those who don't is mostly because they can't afford the higher costs of the film material and processing etc, otherwise ...) both and all methods are good in the end though, and needed as well, but sacrificing one for the other, especially throwing the acoustic/analog stuff away in favor of digital is a HUGE mistake imo!
My late grandmother had something similar to this I think this was before she got her Lowry Heritage back in 1990 1991 about there was a cassette tape of a recording she did and it was some piece that she made up but never could play it again because she didn't remember what she did on the Hammond she had.
Check out the inside. If the leslie is still working, it's a pair of horns that rotates. Sits on top of a speaker. Turn on the switch and you should hear it spin up if it's still working. Press a key before you do it so you can hear what it does... if it still works. Very cool.
There is a white rocker tablet on the Auto-Vair drum unit which is at the left and will stop the automatic rhythms. The reason for the chrome on the pedals, because it matches the modern contemporary design as I love that chrome pedal board. The white strip in between the two keyboards is called an Arpeggiator, play a chord on the lower keyboard and slide your right finger as you will hear an arpeggio of any voice on the upper keyboard. I sure wished that I could find a good deal on like you did, but please do not remove the chrome off of the pedals as it matches the modern contemporary design of the organ. On the lower right side, is a touch pad to set the tempo and it is called Touch Tempo. The Polyphonic blue percussion keys are used inconjuction with the Tonebars (drawbars), and choose any of them to give you a jazz sound. This organ is analog, using Multiplex technology, and I would have to say that the piano sounds good and the closes to sound so real for an analog voice. Hammond did not get into digital sampling technology until 1986, after being bought out from a man from Australia, and then purchased by Suzuki. This model Hammond is known as the Concord series, originally developed from the first generation 2100 in 1973, but this model the 2307 came out possibly in the mid to late 1970s as Touch Tempo was then added and Auto-Vari drum unit. If you have any question, please contact me.
I brought a Nihon Hammond made in Japan with leslie effects, the one I brought had been modified and the volume increased it had an input for a proper leslie unit and was used in a private movie theater sadly the electronics let it down, I still have the speakers for this unit
The percussion tabs only work with the B preset down just like the B-3. The model # is located under the keyboards looking up (where you put your knees. 2300. the digits in the ones and tens place usually represent the wood finish (cherry, oak, walnut etc...) and the cabinet style (French Provential etc...)
Looks like a late 70's Hammond, prior to the Elegante and Commodore models which were early to mid 80's models. I inherited an Elegante and use it for practice in my Band Mojo Jones'n. these are great organs.
The model number is on the back, above the ventilated plywood. That looks like aa Aurora Elegante. I have an Aurora Classic from 1981, looks very similar. Your model is the top of the line for the time, I think. The popping and hissing is probably a bad capacitor in the power supply. Mine used to do that also. I got mine for $20 about 3 years ago, changed all the electrolytic caps, aluminum and tantalum. Fun job. Solved some problems, created others. These LSI ( Large Scale Integration ) organs are very persnicity.
I just saw a "never used =furniture" (ie: in perfect condition, besides just sitting & collecting dust since the mid 70's) model 231 2M early/mid 70's"Concorde" for free on craigslist!!! if i only had a truck and 4 big friends with the day off!!!! PS: yours looks like a newer (early 80s?) version of the "concorde" i was speaking of. Identical keys/stops/etc. only the body is different with plastic trim with the traditional dark wood.
James do you come across any early Yamaha organs. I stumbled upon one not the one used by ELP but it looked and sounded great, it had huge speaker cabinets and took at least 6 people to shift this beast
Like a tonewheel organ mated to a Lowery Festival theatre organ. What is the specific model name? Does it include its own rotary systems integrated inside the casing?
Does this still have the two switches for start and run. The clock motor Hammonds would always have a pop when you hit the key. What is so hard to fix these? I had my first job repairing organs in the mid 60's when I was 15. My older brother had to drive me on service calls because I couldn't drive. We mostly sold Gulbransen which were like the Hammond as they both only produced sine waves. The Gulbransen had an individual oscillator for each note. As these were never in sync it gave a much fuller sound.
There is a Hammond on our local craigslist for $200 and looks to be in fantastic condition and the seller says it works great. Apparently owner is moving to assisted living and can't take it with her. If I had the room for it, I would get it. It has the full foot pedals too with attached seat.
The light blue switches are probably instrumentation that goes with the rhythm section (The light blue buttons) Choose a rhythm, start it, and flip one of those light blue switches and see what happens. It's kind of the like the style button on the Yamaha DGX640. You can turn on and off instruments to go with a given rhythm selection.
I have a 1983 Composer, which was a console version of this. Tube amplifier, Leslie speaker, touch pad for activating the rhythm section, single finger chords, drawbars, and worst of all, NO TONEWHEELS. It's all solid state, though it probably is the best sounding transistor organ money can buy. I paid $200 for my Composer; $300 is probably a fair price for this.
Hey!! I learned to play organ at my church in Virginia Beach on this EXACT Model! I know this organ LITERALLY inside and out! As I'm watching your video, I'm talking and telling you how to get things to actually work! (I know you can hear me! LOL). Leslie Chorale DOES actually SLOWLY slow down the Leslie, as a normal Hammond organ with a Leslie (the Leslie 710 was made to work with it!) , but you must have the Leslie tabs depressed. To use the percussion, on the upper manual, press the B preset. It is a great sounding Hammond, when you have an external Leslie (ECHO) It has a very good sound... It is a BOAT ANCHOR - VERY heavy... but overall a great instrument... Played it in the '80's - Anyhow.. thanks for sharing!! Hammond Concorde!!
I have this exact organ to give away for free! It’s perfect on the outside, needs a little wiring work fixed in the inside! Know anyone who might like it?
That is a Concorde 2300 series organ. The Concorde 2100 series was trouble prone, but the 2300 was pretty stable. First thing to do is remove each card from its connector and spray the connector and edge down with DeOxit. Then check all of the filter boards for cold solder joints. (I had a capacitor fall right off of the board when I was working on mine. (ALWAYS obey static discharge when working inside of it, those LSI chips are kind of sensitive and very hard to replace.) Other trouble points little soft flaps on the preset key, that release the locking bar, but can be replaced by a hard flexible plastic. The "other" leslie tab is for an external leslie. I had a 22R hooked up to mine and it sounded great when flat out. It is not a tone-wheel organ, but it has its own sounds which can be very close to the B or sounds all their own. I gave mine away eventually, to a veteran that always wanted one and replaced it with an Allen 705. It sits next to my Hammond E100 and Hammond S6. My wife said one more organ, and she is leaving. I will miss the way that she cooks oatmeal on Sundays.
It's a Hammond Concorde 2300 series. You have there a model 2307 with a contemporary cabinet. I have model 2312 which has the same electronics but has a more traditional cabinet styling. I used to sell Hammond organs and would occasionally give concerts for local organ clubs. The Concorde is a great organ. It has a really gutsy, rich sound especially when played through an external Leslie speaker such as a two-channel model HL722 or 715. I have mine hooked up to a four-channel model 740; however, two of the channels are unused. The B3 is a great organ too, but it has a different tonal profile. The B3 has more of an "edgy" sound that's great for today's gospel, jazz, and rock whereas the Concorde has a rounder, more theatrical/pop organ tonal profile. As others have mentioned, you'll probably need to clean the edge connectors on the circuit boards and will need to replace some capacitors to get rid of the hum. I love the additional percussion harmonics available on the Concorde (the blue tabs). Most organs including the B3 only had 2nd or 3rd harmonics. Try these jazz registrations on the B preset on the upper manual: 88 800 0000, Percussion Fast, 3rd harmonic, Leslie Upper, Leslie Chorale. Now try the same registration except use 3rd and 8th harmonics. Then try the same except use 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th harmonics. There are lots of other possibilities also since the Concorde has sustain which isn't available on a B3: Swiss bells, vibraphone, and other cool effects.
@ Greg Taylor: an impartial comment with great info on both this great gem and the B3 at last, unlike some other people bashing it totally! i'm sure you know very well what you're talking about sir! many thanks. :-)
The blue percussion stops are only active with the "B" preset just like on a real B. The 12 daughter boards in these are lotsa trouble but the biggest is the one little ground wire and finger contact for the whole big motherboard, there are 3 of these. The amplifiers are also plugged into finger contacts, don't clean well solder them straight on. These finger contacts on the boards are the biggest problem period, as they are copper or tin not gold.
It is from the 1970's I saw one at Lyon and Healy's in Chicago when I went to school at the ACM for organ. I looked it up and found it to be a X-66 introduced in 1967.
I'm pretty sure it is a all transistor Aurora. How does the sound compare to a B3 with tone wheel? People give these away for free or actually pay you to take them here in Canada
It does not sound anything like a B3, but to play around with people could have a little bit of fun with them. If you could pick one up for little or no money you could find out if you would enjoy an organ, and if you wanted to invest in something a bit more upscale.
NOISE PROBLEM - possible noisy transistors , LSI, contact corrosion or cap. Tab contacts can also be a problem ;( by toggling them on/off can help clean contacts so they work (if they're not). Sustain is different from reverb - SUSTAIN ; The note lingers & gradually fades ; REVERB - the note immediately stops sounding, but like a note/chord played on a pipe organ in a cathedral keeps sounding , like an echo (but it's not an echo) for 2 to more seconds. SUSTAIN/REVERB usually have 2 or 3 settings to vary the length. Tubes in Pe-amp problem? - By the time these organs hit the market , they were well into transistors & LSI. AND it could be the pre-amp or the Main Amp or the Power Supply. I have a C3 (B3, different cabinet) & an X66. Once I got my X66 , I had my baby & no longer much pursued other models. However, going by the pedal board, I know of 2 organs that had those shiny metal-looking pedal keyboards; The X66 , & X77, The Concorde (which was suppose to be a spin-off of the X77). probably had them too , & the Elegante ? I believe the Aurora was a spinet model & the Colonnade was the console model of the Aurora.
It looks like an H model...it may need oil in the tone wheel generator. Open the back if you see 3 or so metal funnels, thats where u oil it with hammond oil or singer sewing machine oil just like a b3. Moisture may cause the noise so put it in a dry place and leave it on to heat it up or get a dehumidifier
Wish this was for sale on my town. I'd take a chance on it. I used to have a Hammond Concorde and it had silver pedals. Cost over $4000.00 new. When we moved I couldn't take it. The NEW hammond XK3 is in the same price range , uses current tech and sounds amazingly like the B3
I played a Lowrey of a similar vintage in the 80's that also had simulated Leslie. Mine needed an hour with a generic music store technician and all of it's problems were solved. They're pretty basic technology for anybody who has any experience fixing instruments. The problem is that the wiring is very thin and sometimes the soldering is not as strong as it should be. They're quite easy to fix. Not sure I'd want to. As for "rare" I know 2 or 3 places in Ontario that are full of these things. They can't give them away.
I have the same organ, i played the leslie and Chorus together for another unique sound. Finally found a leslie to go with it, and now the leslie is plugged into the 9 hole connection on back of hammond organ.and sounds great. I dont have the switch, just the tab...slower activation between having leslie turn on and off
This looks like the big brother of the T-500 at my parents’ house. This one has similar controls and features but more of them, and a bigger pedal keyboard. The T-500 is a tonewheel organ but I’m not sure I’m going to accept the offer to take it to my house. I would rather try to find a B3. I have no idea what a mid seventies era T-500 might be worth.
the buttons labled AB C and D are different variations on your lower left hand arpeggio and on your far left top are what looks like a brown and white switch this should work the other switches you said don't work they are colour coded so white works all white tabs etc hope it helps
James..i had an old Lowery organ that did the same...if not worse...i located the volume control - under the foot pedal - and sprayed a little "contact cleaner" inside the control...(with everything off and unplugged of course) and it stopped completely....seems humidity corrodes the contacts a little....was an easy fix
The volume pedal in these is optical and noiseless. They do go bad in the way volume can't be shut down fast, it fades down slowly. Remove every connector in these organs and clean and reinsert. Noises will go.
my thoughts? it's a collector's item, unique, $300...if you don't purchase it, James, I will think you are odd. Of course, it's Sep 25 when you entered, it's probably gone, by now. IT sounds SWEET!
Beautiful machine!!!!!!!!! I have two, the Hammond Concorde with Chrome pedals in the contemporary cabinet, and I have the traditional cabinet one. Also, having the same issues/problems as this one! (both of mine having the sound issues, including a third one that I have (a Hammond Commodore)-
Now that's interesting, if you are having the same problem, I know someone out there knows how to repair the organ. When things go wrong it is often the same thing that goes each time. I knew a person who repaired monitors for computers, and he was so sure what was wrong with certain models when they came in for factory repairs he would just replace the part without even checking it out until the part had been replaced.
I find that sometimes when I have the Leslie on, that sometimes the crackles don't happen. I'm not sure how to fix it though, except, when I leave them on for a good while, it seems to subside. Sometimes, the crackles sort of occur when I'm actually playing, and I can hear the sound of the drawbars start to fade and go out. I've yet to have any of mine fixed, as I can't find anyone in my region that will work on them. The percussion sounds only play when you have the top registration key is pressed (Drawbars and percussion)-though sometimes, the percussion crackles in and out and just stops working.
LESLIE UPPER & LESLIE LOWER need to be pushed DOWN at all times for the LESLIE that is in the SIDE of the CABINET to work. Then you press LESLIE CHORALE for the SPEED TO SLOW DOWN. When you push that tab back up number 3, in that section it makes the LESLIE SPEED UP. We had a SIMILAR ORGAN but a lot newer in our old church.
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I remember seeing organs like that at the organ store at the mall when I was a kid. Yes, they had organ stores in malls. I’m that old.
i remember those stores.
Yep... Willowbrook Mall in Wayne N.J. Had a Hammond store.
Oh, how I used to love the organ store as a kid! Of course, the organ store salesmen took a dim view of kids messing around with the devices so I didn't get to play much.
When I was a a Kid, the local mall had both a Lowery dealership and Sherman & Clay (a Kimball Dealership). Both of these faded and one called Colton (they sold Technics Organs and Schafer & Sons pianos) all these are gone now.
There was a Hammond organ store in the JCRS shopping mall Lakewood Colorado that a friend and I would go into. He would sit down to play and one or two people would want to stop him. But as soon as he would start to play they would stop dead in their tracks. Floyd W. if you see this I hope you are doing well. Charlie.
That "angry" crackling you hear is from the instrument, more specifically the speakers, being in a moist environment. The same thing happened to my 1973 Yamaha organ back in the early 1980s when we moved it into the basement. Once back upstairs, the crackling stopped.
I have the exact same organ (almost) sitting 20 feet from me as I type this. Electronically, the Concorde was a great design...mechanically not so much. First, that constructed all the electronic (PC) boards out of phenolic. Over time they warp and so when inserted into rigid inline edge connector sockets, some of the edge contacts....do not make contact and this can cause a lot of random problems. Boards made out of glass epoxy, while slightly more expensive, do not have this problem. No one uses phenolic anymore. Cleaning the contacts will not solve this problem, but will help the ones that are still making contact.
Hammond used the best capacitors available at the time they designed the organ...late 60's. The only ones that I have seen fail are the power supply electrolytics as they do with age in all electronics. When they are leaky, they typically cause hum..not static. The tone wheel organs had a bunch of "orange drop" caps in the tone wheel assembly that have to eventually be replaced also as they drift in value with age.
The IC's in the Concorde were custom designed by Mostek .. a Texas company that also made the parts for the first electronic calculator and many other things. Very new technology in the 60's and probably .. counting their design cost as it was unique to the Concorde .. was half the cost of the organ for Hammond as everything else is discrete parts and common ... still available today.
I designed electronics for a living and am now retired with time so fixing these problems became a challenge for me. ;) When I bought the organ in the early 70's they gave me the service manual so I had all the electronic info. I relaid out all the boards in glass epoxy, combined some circuits onto fewer boards (there were a lot of boards!) as smaller and better parts are available today, and ... because engineers can't resist "fixing things" .. changed a few circuits including the power supply which was ... a mess. The original "unobtainium" IC"s were carefully removed from the original boards and installed in sockets in the new ones. So now when I turn it on, I can count on no problems. I hope! A fun almost year long project, but glad I didn't have to pay for the labor!
I've seem the custom IC's being sold on the web for 200 dollars each ... and there are 45 of them, so if you find a Concorde cheap, carefully remove the IC's from the boards, and then throw the rest of the organ away you could make some real bucks!
Hammond designed and sold several other "IC" organs after the Concorde including the Elegante in the early 80's. Between their design cost and the fact that people were not buying home organs any more, it probably put them out of business.
Jim
Cool project! I’ve done a similar sort of project on my Soundcraft 2400. The original PC boards were FR4 but single sided. So many pads lifted from the leverage of especially the TT patchbay jacks but also some of the switches. I’ve redone most of the board in double sided FR4 with very generous pad sizes on both top and bottom, and it is now very reliable. Some of these ‘disasters’ can be cool projects when you are an engineer or technician.
I came across one of these back in the mid 90's when I had a business fixing organs . These were almost impossible to repair due to the custom chips you described and the warped boards were a nightmare. Cudos for fixing yours that's a labour of love. I have an L111 which is much simpler and through my Leslie 147 RV it sounds like a Hammond should.
Kind of a shock (get it?) when you consider that the contacts in a B3 were made out of palladium.
I was going to say, that thing is definitely pre-1980s just from the external design, but also organs were so uncool by the 80s because of synths.
I hope you also took the time to think adding a feature to your new glass epoxy PCBs !!!..... yes ADDING A MIDI RETROFIT TO IT....OF COURSE, IF YOU BELIEVE IT CAN BE DONE !!
THAT WOULD BE AWESOME AND EVEN NOT HAVING TOUCH SENSITIVITY
IT ADDS A LOT SPECIALLY IF YOU PLAY VIRTUAL SYNTHS LIKE THE
B4 II by Native Instruments Plugin.....but now it is discontinued !
There are other Virt Inst brands to find Hammond like sounds !
Please post comment if you think you will add that and add your video
working MIDI with your Concorde !!
Thanks
ps. sorry 4 the caps, the caps key got stuck !
Hammond Concorde! Looks like a 1977. You scored a winner. One rare bird.
I found a B3 with the Leslie for $300 at a garage sale last year. Needless to say, it is in my living room at the moment. The classics never go out of style.
I think a lot of people out there feel they are going to the wrong garage sales.
Last winter my wife and I were thrift store shopping over near Pittsburgh and we wandered into a Goodwill store. There was a Hammond M3 Tonewheel organ sitting in the furniture section. It looked like new except for a recent scratch likely acquired in the donation pickup. The store clerk said that it was being sold as a furniture item and it could not be tested or even plugged in due to its age and lack of a modern 3 prong power plug. It would not fit in my car, but I paid the asking price and was given 48 hours to pick it up or forfeit my money. Of course it was snowing when I set out to pick up the organ, but the guy unloading the donation truck helped me stuff the 250 pound beast into my Honda Element.....it barely fit. This M3 turns out to be from 1958. The original purchase receipt was in the bench, as was a receipt for $200 worth of servicing from just over a year prior. Seeing that, I decided to forgo the usual teardown needed for vintage electronics, and plug it in. To my surprise, it plays perfectly with no hum and all functions work. It's still going great 9 months on. The purchase price.......$39.95. It cost me more in gasoline to make the two 70 mile (each way) trips to get it.
What a wonderful story. It's just great to hear about saving a vintage instrument from just being a piece of furniture or worse.
I used to play an ARP Odyssey back in the 70's, but never had a tonewheel Hammond or room for one. I was surprised to see it at a Goodwill store for cheap, and couldn't pass it up. I can't play like I did nearly 50 years ago, but still try. My daughter plays well and maybe one of her kids will get it somewhere down the road.
I wonder how many people are still around to rebuild these things what a unbelievably fantastic musical instrument
Now all you need is a Leslie to go with it; of course it will cost quite a bit more than the Hammond.
Booker T machine
I forgot to mention, the tabs/switches above the drawbars on the left side (blue, white, tan, pink, yellow, red) may work perfectly. James didn't realize you have to have the first of the black preset keys (immediately to the left of the white/black regular keys) depressed to activate these sounds. They can be combined with one set of the drawbars. It's an easy mistake to make. The piano solo tab overrides anything on the upper manual when depressed. Aso, these colored tabs have a 2nd voice that is activated by depressing another tab at the far right side of the tabs called "second voice". It changes the "plunk" on the harpsicord into a violin, other sounds in to saxophones, or trumpets, etc. When you use the violin with a Vibrato, it's hard to tell from a real violin. Lots of cool stuff on there if you know how to turn it on.
Wow! This brings back memories. It was in 1973 when this model showed up at First Glorious Church on Arthur Avenue in The Bronx. That's the church my mother's first cousin and her husband founded in the late 1950's. Forty-five years later, it's still in the building. It was relocated from the sanctuary to the third floor grand dining hall....and it still works.
Very interesting and even surprising to see such a young guy who obviously has a good knowledge of what is an amazing instrument (in the right hands of course) Hammond's possessed a particular 'SOUND' if anyone has over looked (not heard this sound) Dig out any Booker T especially Time Is Tight. No matter how many times I hear this number, I can listen all day to it. Thank You James,You are a star!.
i really miss the organ days, back when every respectable department store had a music section with organs in it. as a little kit i'd make a beeline for the organs, joyously flupping the multicolored stoptabs and pushing buttons and twiddling knobs etc. i really loved the 2&2/3 nazard, the 2" fife and 1" piccolo stops, but the other people found them piercing and frowned at me. they shoulda been happy i never messed with the post horn.
Loved the organ and the demonstration. Always had an interest in organs and keyboards, although I cannot play anything, just make noise. We found a very nice, completely functional A-100 (a B3 but with built in amp and speakers!) for $500 at a church that had used it very little and then obtained a pipe organ. The thing really wails. It is extremely heavy, it took four of us to get it into the house without breaking anything. There are great deals out there. I still have my dad's Schober Theater Organ, which he made from a kit, even stained and finished the wood cabinet.
ToyKingWonder Good find at $500!
ToyKingWonder played in a band with an A-100 and Leslie. Took four of us to load it onto a U-Haul ! Great B-3 sound, just heavier
I repaired a similar model Hammond for a relative in the '80's. If I am not mistaken the one feature I did not see you explain is the brass switched capacitance touch plate on the lower left manual that can be used (when set to "on") to set tempo and start a previously selected percussion rhythm automation by tapping the plate 1-2-3-4 (HAMMOND TOUCH TEMPO) Great Video.
Amazing! I have almost the exact same Hammond Concorde organ (this model is the 2312M). The only real difference is that mine has the piston preset buttons located above the upper keyboard instead of on the left side of the keyboards (that's what the reversed black and white keys are on the model here). I bought mine used in 1981 in Montgomery, AL, for about $1800, if my memory serves me well. I still have this organ but just like this one, it suffers from hisses and pops as well as power supply problems (the organ sometimes just shuts off by itself). I thought it about finding someone to repair it, but after reading the comments here about the phenolic circuit boards and expensive ICs, I don't think it would make sense. While I'm pretty handy with fixing things, I don't think I want to take on the challenge of making all the repairs myself. (Maybe I should take out the ICs and sell them as someone here suggested and then trash the organ. Not sure I could bring myself to do that, though!)
My wife wants me to get rid of this organ but it has sentimental value to me. I grew up in Miami, FL, with a Lowery spinet organ and later a Yamaha console organ in that was really junky compared to this Hammond.
I wish they still made console organs like this. There's just something special about playing these, with all the bells and whistles, compared to a synthesizer. I, too, remember the organ/piano stores in the shopping malls. When I was a teenager, used to love going to the mall with my friends and then sitting down and playing a mall store console organ and waiting for a salesman to throw me out, only for him to do an about-face once he discovered I knew what I was doing and was a pretty good young organist. Then they would try to sell me one! (Very expensive back then.)
If anyone here knows how to change the music rack light bulbs, please let me know. I know how to open the top of the organ but I can't for the life of me figure out how to get the translucent cover off the light to change a couple of the bulbs that are burned out.
Thank you so much for posting this video and thanks for all those who commented!
These are completely solid state. No tonewheels and no tubes. I had an R-100, which is similar to this, and it seems 90% of the electronic gremlins on these are due to the 'edge-cards' they used to house the components. These individual boards plug into a bus, much the same as computer graphics and sound cards plug into a motherboard. The contacts get corroded over the years, and it's a pretty simple (but time consuming) job to pull all the cards and clean up the edge contacts with fine steel wool and some electronics spray. The spray also works well for any tab switches and potentiometers. ...and yes, the swell pedal should function for both the normal speaker, and the Leslie. There should be dual 'pots' on the pedal assembly that control both sides.😉 Hope you got it straightened out.😁
My wife would kill me if brought this home.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
@D2RG6 Lmao! Good one lol.
@ Aaron Barber: so would mine ... but between her and this, it's clear which one stays and the other HAS TO go! ;-) :D
So grateful that I don't have a wife... But I still have a mom, rip.
😂
In the 60's, there were probably more piano & organ showrooms than guitar centers, and I drooled over organs at every store in my hometown. Organ makers were starting to add beat boxes and percussive tabs like banjo and piano. They sounded somewhat cheesy, but gave organists more options. Bass & cymbal on the pedals and snare & cymbal on the lower is borrowed from the traps in theatre/pipe organ - it works great in om-pah music. Hammond followed the new trends fairly quickly. And at that point, there had to be a speaker with a moving baffle to use the Leslie name; remember they were 2 separate companies. We have a similar Hammond at church but without the chrome pedals. That sleek look may have been copied from the the top of the line Yamaha Electone - everyone said it looked like a refrigerator. Finally, there are published copyrighted versions of “House of the Rising Sun” but the song itself actually predates copyright law. Thanks for the video.
Yes, but the version I played was from the Animals, and that version is copyrighted. I am in the process of writing a new arrangement for House of the Rising Sun, and it's coming out very nicely. It will have the same words as always as they are not copyrighted, it is not known who wrote the words, and so no copyright on them.
Fun fact: Guitar Center started out as Organ Center in California.
a hammond organ is completely different to synthesizer right? i mean they are two comepletely different things. right? sorry for my stupid question
@@johntsiaros2362 Well for a vintage Hammond organ they would be on different ends of the universe.
The flute sounds are the best.
I have one of these. I'm in the Indianapolis area and would be interested in finding it a home. My Dad bought it for my Mom in early 70,s. I'm sure it needs work and believe my Son had it playing 15 yrs ago. Grand kids loved flipping the tabs up n down. "Fascination" was the only song my Dad could play on it. He could make the chills go thru you. My Mom could really get it going.
Believe it or not, the first organ I ever saw in someone's home was that particular model with all those lighted switches on top. How could I ever forget it? Late 1970s or circa 1980. I love the look and sound.
Thanks for the video. I recently acquired a Hammond H-100 and had no idea that a tone wheel generator was a thing that existed. This thing is so complicated! The inside was pretty clean, though all the galvanized bits had gray fur. I replaced the power supply filter caps with Sprague axials (and relocated them offboard), the power cord, and the 5AR4 rectifier tubes, added a 4A breaker switch, tested/cleaned/reinstalled all the tubes, replaced the 7591s with 2 new 7591A tubes, used my fingernail to gradually loosen a frozen section in the clockwork toner generator until the motor would spin it without help, added new oil, sprayed WD-40 from underneath to get rid of all the residual bearing noise, disconnected/cleaned/reconnected all the major accessible wiring connectors, etc. It seems to mostly work! There is more hum & hiss than there should be but I just obtained an original service manual, so I hope that will help chase those issues down. It seems a few of the drawbars do not appear to work and I understand that there is a way to shift the bus-bar and wipe the contacts and/or give them new contact surfaces. Any suggestions are welcome! Oh, I do not play the keyboards and my prior relevant experience is limited to tube guitar amps and effects and being mechanically intuitive.
No WD-40.
.
Use "Singer(sewing machine) oil" instead..
.
@@ward9457 ..or you can still buy the recommended tone-wheel generator oil on Amazon, believe it or not! www.amazon.com/dp/B00F8EYHL6/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_gq7HEbTCKQ42N
That my friends is a Hammond Concorde. It was the 2nd generation of the same name, the first was from the early 1970's. This one dates to about 1978. It was their best model at the time, and sold for about $10K (in 1978 dollars). It featured a new "gadget" called "touch tempo" (the gold plate on the right side panel - lower keyboard) whereby you could tap in your tempo (4x) and the organ would match that tempo.
Believe or not I have one in my living room in Little River, SC. Most of it works well. I think I paid about $1300.00 for it 15 or 20 years ago. Just about impossible to have it serviced.
Non tone wheel hammonds are worth about that if they work perfectly. If you want to do some DIY troubleshooting for fun have at it, but otherwise I wouldn't put much money into it. Get a service manual. There is an organization for organ techs called MITA, but be advised they are not very DIY friendly. You will need a scope and some decent soldering skills to work on these, and a bench with a good supply and some fixturing helps a lot.
That is one of several Hammond models that came out after the H-100 series and with features derived from the X-100, perhaps the finest Hammond electric organ ever made. The point of this model is to combine the full hammond drawbar system with percussion, vibrato, and so forth PLUS the tab section which adds the transistor organ and related sounds. That gives you great string, reed, and other sounds to combine with the Hammond sound. There are a lot of good miscellaneous percussion effects.There are a lot of cool things you can do if the organ is in full operating condition. It sounds like yours needs repair. The problem is finding parts AND a repair person that can help you. I prefer the current Hammond SK-1 and XK-3 with good synthesizers on the side. I wish you the best!
I bought a Hammond X77 and X77 Leslie amplifier. Both of them were very heavy for sure. I bought them for $100.00. I paid my Nephew $200.00 to use his truck and help me get it home. After a month or so I put them up for sale and got $600.00. He came with rented truck and paid a friend of mine $50.00 to help load it. He had wanted one like that with the matching Leslie. He could play like crazy and happy to find them. I can't play but because I love the sound of them I wanted to get one to play around with.
Wow. That's all they are worth? Has beautiful sound. I would guess it's worth at least 1,800?
I remember that organ !! It had the same drive belts as my mother's washing machine !! 😊
Looks exactly like a Hammond I used to play in church back in the 70s. Except it didn't have any of the rhythm buttons. Nice piece, but I just wonder if you can find parts or anyone to work on it.
This is a Concorde organ. It was introduced around 1974 if my memory serves me right. I was a Hammond Organ Service tech. I could work 7 days a week 24 hours a day on service calls, that how large the organ sales were. The Concorde did have a small rotating drum when it first came out and that was the leslie speaker. The pedal sustain switch on the foot pedal was used to cancel the sustain when you pushed the foot switch. The tabs not working just need cleaning and some silicon grease. THis would be great to have. I still have my spinet T-500 which is smaller than the concorde which was call a Console Organ.
I just picked up THREE Hammond X-66 s. Out of 3 hopefully I can get ONE good one out of it. Also got 3 Tone Cabs out of it. ALL FREE.
I gave one to a church already because they have 2 (not working). One has been shipped to San Diego to a guy who actually enjoys fixing them.
Anyway, my Twin bro and I now have matching Hammonds and someday will get them working. Also have a ancient hammond Collonade working.
Great Vids. And Great Skills, Young Man.
Bad LSI (Large Scale Integration) design that failed miserably. They were sending out techs constantly. It was trying to make the whole organ with capacitors. There are a ton of bad caps in there and it would be insanely time consuming and expensive to restore. I have repaired Hammond organs for a living for 3 decades. This is a piece of junk. Stick with the 3 series organs (includes generator, scanner and percussion same as on B3) : B3, C3, A100 and RT3 with either a 122/142 or 147/145 type Leslie. Anything else is just useless.
My Concorde is almost 60 years old and had two bad caps. Caps were not the problem with the Concorde and neither were the LSI parts. Mechanical contacts were the major problem.
I couldn't possibly disagree. While those are of course great models, I've found pretty much any Hammond with a tonewheel generator to have plenty of worth. Of course the 3's have more features than their predecessors, making them better by comparison, but they're all good in my opinion. The L and T series sound great (Keith Emerson used them!!), and having had an H-324 for about ten years now, I have a particular fondness for the insane amount of features that the H series has, in addition to the fact that it has more drawbar harmonics than any other model. Never had many issues with it either, and the few issues I have had I was able to fix with a little troubleshooting and some good ol' persistence, and I HAVEN'T been working on organs for 3 decades for a living. I promise you, that played through a Leslie, 99.999% of people couldn't tell the difference between my H-324 and a B3 proper. And while we're on lesser mentioned models, lest we not forget the gorgeous work of art that is the Hammond X66, which seems to retain pretty good value, and has quite a cult following of it's own. Definitely very different sounding, but that's part of it's charm.
Will say though, I'm glad you Hammond purists find all these magnificent organs to be useless. It just means I can pick them up for little to nothing.
@ Chris Nowak: you can say that because of your professional expertise in the filed ... for someone like me in love with organs in general and crazy about Hammonds in particular, i'd keep this 'thing' especially at such a low price even if it doesn't work! just listen to its sounds ... it's still quite fine in its own rights even at its present shape! me wanteth bad! :-)
@ @@UMAMIMAMU : couldn't agree more! i played with a Yamaha YC20 equipped with its own dedicated Yamaha Leslie-style amp (a very good one btw!) in the 1970s for some time and you couldn't tell the difference between that combo and a great Hammond organ + an original Leslie either ... and i'm not a pro musician really!
at the same time i also heard others play the same Yamaha and amp combo professionally and they made great Hammond-like sounds indeed ... however, Hammond is always a different thing as it started the trend and owning one is kind of like an honor thingy for me! love them all anyway but Hammond is in a class of its own ...
speaking of Yamaha electronic organs and its own rotary speaker-amps, just check out the super-futuristic white color fiberglass-body Yamaha X68 of 1968 and then its few next in line models in the 1970s and maybe later ... they're superb instruments in both performance AND advanced capabilities plus that magical super high-tech looks rivaling the Hammond and all other great names in the industry such as the Lowrey or even latest 'space-ship' models by Versi and others today ...
Chris Nowak m3?
Sometimes there is a Switch you have to hit to change from Draw bars to Waterfall controls.
my thoughts are HOW COOL IS THAT?!! LOVE THAT SOUND!!
I am from Colombia South America, this organs were very popular here from the 50s into the early 90s. I own one of those Concorde the limited edition with lid. Love this things
I have the nearly exact same organ, yours looks a bit newer, mine has a cassette recorder and clear plexiglass music rack. I just got done rebuilding it, and everything now works except the light for the pedals (don't look at them anyway). Replaced all the large electrolytic capacitors, many power transistors, one little diode it the power amp that caused the voice coil in the 15" speaker to burn out (replaced), and cleaned up and lubed the Leslie. Sounds good now. It was built in 1975. The instructions, schematics and pictures are online. Just google Hammond Concorde Service Manual. You can get a free PDF manual. Previous organ was Hammond H-100 with A-10 tone cabinet, sold to a church. Tom Miller, Phoenix, AZ.
Tom .. Mine is the early version also. Agree on the power supply. In addition to the caps, mine also had poor connections between the ground lug on several multi-lug terminal strips and the chassis causing hum. Also, due to aging of the resistor bias networks, the power amps were drawing to much idle current .. thus running too hot.
Glad to hear others are getting these older organs going!
Jim
I gave away my organ many years ago. Would that make me an organ donor?
I see these vintage Hammonds and other brands at thrift stores and EstateSales quite often and always cheap. If someone has some technical background and can fix them, they are a good deal. Finding a technician that can fix them is hard.
That guy in the mirror watching you. Is he the cameraman or is he the thrift store guy making sure you don't mess up his paycheck?
I would have to bring this home when my husband was away on a trip or something LOL. There would definitely be a lot of head shaking when he got back.
There's a possibility that I may have played this very same model of organ around 25-30 years ago. I do seem to remember it being a souped up Hammond organ. I think I remember really pushing the "speed limit" on that organ with some very fast playing, including possibly hitting keys repeatedly like a mandolin effect or doing some very fast fiddle-like effect. I do remember that it was NOT your average Hammond organ.
Yes, I agree with HisXLNC below about organ stores inside of malls. I miss those days! The Ohio Valley Mall in St. Clairsville, OH had TWO such stores. Now they have ZERO.
Anyway, may God's peace be with ya--in the name of Jesus!
From a fellow organist and musician,
John Nozum
As a Hammond organ service technician back in the sixties and seventies, I’ve encountered that noise problem before. It is likely caused by a diode in the power supply called a Zener diode, or avalanche breakdown diode, used as a voltage regulator. I’m sure they are still available, but you would need to know it’s specifications before replacing it. A service manual schematic would be immensely helpful, and I’m sure any tech that knows amplifiers and power supplies could find and replace the offending component. Good luck, and I think you got the deal of the century if you can get it repaired
Great tip. I advise to also replace all the capacitors in the same power supply. Furthermore cleaning all multiconnectors will often help, for instance to get the missing poly presets back. Loads of great old organs are begging for this kind of treatment before it is too late. Do however not postpone such jobs too long after starting to use them again. Otherwise the (re)new(ed) freindships might not last long.
1:46 ooooo that voice crack
It's a Hammond Concorde. I had a 1971 Concorde, it was the stage model, which was black and had a white leather seat, chrome pedals, there are a few differences from the one you found here, this one I think must be just a little bit older than mine was. Mine didn't have the ABCD tabs on the top right, and the tempo section was set up better. I miss it to this day, haven't been able to find another one like it. Yes, I think that you found a steal!
My dad worked for Hammond UK and we had one of those exact models in the front room back in 1977.
This organ is the Hammond Concord. I call it the organ of the 70s. The first time I saw this organ was at a church in Columbus, Ohio and I thought it was the neatest thing with the silver pedals.
In the 80s Hammond came out with the Hammond Elegante which is the organ of the 80s. Hammond Concords and Elegantes have similar sounds and extras.
Just guessing but I’m thinking the shiny pedals are actual wood with plastic caps to protect the wood, thus the plastic makes them look that way. Right?
Those organs are notorious for having quirks and noises due to bad connections on various circuit boards. They can usually be cured by removing the connectors, cleaning them and readjust the prong to make a tighter fit at the circuit boards. There is actually a rotosonic Leslie built in the organ itself. It’s different than low rotor that you’ll find in a standard Leslie because there’s a 6x9 speaker in the drum itself. I tend to like these in a Leslie better because it has a stronger tremolo than a standard rotor with a woofer on top. The other reason is that rotosonic Leslie take longer to accelerate and decelerate than a traditional Leslie. There’s my rant about this Hammond Concord.
You are right about all of this.
shawnr26 Ive got this old one , it's called a Lowery, with two levels of keys with your level with more sound controls!
its been with my mom for years, I tried to get it up an going, but no luck.
I took the back off and looked at everything while it was plugged in, but nothing was running or humming.
the power cord went to a big transformer, but could'nt tell if anything was on , any ideals what to do or is it junk?
If I had to guess, the noise was from the Lesly(sp) speaker. While I was in Ohio in the 72 time frame I would rebuild the scanner in about one or two hours instead of sending it back to Hammond. I never worked on this model.
It's a Hammond Concorde Mid 1970's to early 80's. It was replaced by the Elegante which was in production until Hammond went out of business.
Organs are sort of like typewriters. Nobody sells them anymore, few people still use them, and nobody repairs them or if they do it can be very expensive. Millions were sold, but someone told me that there is only one typewriter "fixer" left in San Francisco. If you like old organs, you have to be prepared to do simple troubleshooting and fixes yourself (or pay a lot of money). Naturally the B series organs are easier to fix as they have few connectors (if any) and only a few tubes ... and a lot less voices and features. However, as long as they are in demand and available (at some expensive price) there will be fixers.
I don't understand the argument about the Concorde and later Hammond's weight. They have built in power amps and speakers and weigh about the same as a B3 which has none and requires an external tone cabinet. Organs are heavy! All the electronics in the Concorde including the keyboards probably weights....maybe 20 pounds.
The Concorde has about 80 PC cards ... some of which are duplicates .. and maybe 3-400 feet of wiring ... not miles. I know because in replacing the phenolic boards, I replaced the wiring because the new connectors were different. Lots of short wires and connectors though!
When it's fixed and working correctly, I think the Concorde and the later Elegante have a great sound, but I am at best a beginning organ player so I will leave the sound comparison between the LSI organs and the town wheel guys to the experts. The new Hammond Suzuki company has made two (3?) attempts to replicate the B3 sound using the latest electronics and the experts say they are not there yet. I think the problem is they can easily duplicate the tone sounds ... just not the defect sounds such as magnetic coupling in the townwheel pickups, foldover of the upper octave notes, key clicks, octave sounds coming in at different times depending on key force, and others which are all part of the B3 sound. Hammond fixed these defects in the Concorde and later organs, but maybe they were part of the "Hammond Sound" that people liked.
Jim
@ techy5025: another great and well-put comment from you sir! good points also about the 'modern' Hammond-Suzuki thing and its great yet still lagging sound quality when compared to an original Hammond B3 ...
yes, emulating the sound of an acoustic instrument such as the piano or guitar or violin etc via sampling tricks is NEVER the same as the original just when a synthetically made taste of orange or other fruits is never the same as the natural ones, is it?
in case of the Hammond organs sounds, which was electronically produced already yet in an 'analog' manner, there were also a lot of mechanics and 'acoustics' involved as well, making it more like a fully accoustic instrument in comparison to present day 'digitally' emulated or simulated electronic instruments ... (compare that to photographs or movies made using film emulsion vs still or video cameras with a digital sensor ... true pros in the business still seek film and those who don't is mostly because they can't afford the higher costs of the film material and processing etc, otherwise ...)
both and all methods are good in the end though, and needed as well, but sacrificing one for the other, especially throwing the acoustic/analog stuff away in favor of digital is a HUGE mistake imo!
It's a Leslie speaker, and amp, that part of the organ is contained special device. Organ Model 2312M
My late grandmother had something similar to this I think this was before she got her Lowry Heritage back in 1990 1991 about there was a cassette tape of a recording she did and it was some piece that she made up but never could play it again because she didn't remember what she did on the Hammond she had.
Beautiful organ. I think it sounds great!
Check out the inside. If the leslie is still working, it's a pair of horns that rotates. Sits on top of a speaker. Turn on the switch and you should hear it spin up if it's still working. Press a key before you do it so you can hear what it does... if it still works. Very cool.
James, You're the BEST.
There is a white rocker tablet on the Auto-Vair drum unit which is at the left and will stop the automatic rhythms. The reason for the chrome on the pedals, because it matches the modern contemporary design as I love that chrome pedal board. The white strip in between the two keyboards is called an Arpeggiator, play a chord on the lower keyboard and slide your right finger as you will hear an arpeggio of any voice on the upper keyboard. I sure wished that I could find a good deal on like you did, but please do not remove the chrome off of the pedals as it matches the modern contemporary design of the organ. On the lower right side, is a touch pad to set the tempo and it is called Touch Tempo. The Polyphonic blue percussion keys are used inconjuction with the Tonebars (drawbars), and choose any of them to give you a jazz sound. This organ is analog, using Multiplex technology, and I would have to say that the piano sounds good and the closes to sound so real for an analog voice. Hammond did not get into digital sampling technology until 1986, after being bought out from a man from Australia, and then purchased by Suzuki. This model Hammond is known as the Concord series, originally developed from the first generation 2100 in 1973, but this model the 2307 came out possibly in the mid to late 1970s as Touch Tempo was then added and Auto-Vari drum unit. If you have any question, please contact me.
I brought a Nihon Hammond made in Japan with leslie effects, the one I brought had been modified and the volume increased it had an input for a proper leslie unit and was used in a private movie theater sadly the electronics let it down, I still have the speakers for this unit
You have all the benefits of a B3 Hammond and then some on that Organ. Draw bars btw are equivalent to "Stops" on a Pipe organ! My thoughts.
The percussion tabs only work with the B preset down just like the B-3. The model # is located under the keyboards looking up (where you put your knees. 2300. the digits in the ones and tens place usually represent the wood finish (cherry, oak, walnut etc...) and the cabinet style (French Provential etc...)
Looks like a late 70's Hammond, prior to the Elegante and Commodore models which were early to mid 80's models. I inherited an Elegante and use it for practice in my Band Mojo Jones'n. these are great organs.
The model number is on the back, above the ventilated plywood. That looks like aa Aurora Elegante. I have an Aurora Classic from 1981, looks very similar. Your model is the top of the line for the time, I think. The popping and hissing is probably a bad capacitor in the power supply. Mine used to do that also. I got mine for $20 about 3 years ago, changed all the electrolytic caps, aluminum and tantalum. Fun job. Solved some problems, created others. These LSI ( Large Scale Integration ) organs are very persnicity.
I just saw a "never used =furniture" (ie: in perfect condition, besides just sitting & collecting dust since the mid 70's) model 231 2M early/mid 70's"Concorde" for free on craigslist!!! if i only had a truck and 4 big friends with the day off!!!! PS: yours looks like a newer (early 80s?) version of the "concorde" i was speaking of. Identical keys/stops/etc. only the body is different with plastic trim with the traditional dark wood.
Im familiar with that Speaker crackle. Most Electric Organs over 20 years old have that. The C3 I play at my church has that crackle. Esp on Reverb.
Ese es un Hammond Concorde de 1970.
Massive large Hammond organ 👍🎹
I enjoy watching as a "save the machines" enthusiast. 📸
If you lose power in the winter and have a fireplace in your home, you should get about 8 hours of heat out of it.
Larry McKee 😂
You are amazing ... you have so much knowledge ...
Thank you.
At first I thought this was a top gear episode from the title
James do you come across any early Yamaha organs. I stumbled upon one not the one used by ELP but it looked and sounded great, it had huge speaker cabinets and took at least 6 people to shift this beast
I recently came across an older Yamaha Electone FX-20, I will have a video coming out shortly.
Like a tonewheel organ mated to a Lowery Festival theatre organ. What is the specific model name? Does it include its own rotary systems integrated inside the casing?
Does this still have the two switches for start and run. The clock motor Hammonds would always have a pop when you hit the key. What is so hard to fix these? I had my first job repairing organs in the mid 60's when I was 15. My older brother had to drive me on service calls because I couldn't drive. We mostly sold Gulbransen which were like the Hammond as they both only produced sine waves. The Gulbransen had an individual oscillator for each note. As these were never in sync it gave a much fuller sound.
Just one off and on switch on this model.
This organ has only one two speed motor that spins the rotosonic. Not a tone wheel organ.
Your original composition sounds like it could be some kickass video game 🎮 music!!
There is a Hammond on our local craigslist for $200 and looks to be in fantastic condition and the seller says it works great. Apparently owner is moving to assisted living and can't take it with her. If I had the room for it, I would get it. It has the full foot pedals too with attached seat.
The light blue switches are probably instrumentation that goes with the rhythm section (The light blue buttons) Choose a rhythm, start it, and flip one of those light blue switches and see what happens. It's kind of the like the style button on the Yamaha DGX640. You can turn on and off instruments to go with a given rhythm selection.
I have a 1983 Composer, which was a console version of this. Tube amplifier, Leslie speaker, touch pad for activating the rhythm section, single finger chords, drawbars, and worst of all, NO TONEWHEELS. It's all solid state, though it probably is the best sounding transistor organ money can buy. I paid $200 for my Composer; $300 is probably a fair price for this.
I believe the BROWN colored Leslie tab is the one that TURNS off the SOUND UNDER NEATH the organ and gives you just THE SIDE LESLIE.
Hey!! I learned to play organ at my church in Virginia Beach on this EXACT Model! I know this organ LITERALLY inside and out! As I'm watching your video, I'm talking and telling you how to get things to actually work! (I know you can hear me! LOL). Leslie Chorale DOES actually SLOWLY slow down the Leslie, as a normal Hammond organ with a Leslie (the Leslie 710 was made to work with it!) , but you must have the Leslie tabs depressed. To use the percussion, on the upper manual, press the B preset. It is a great sounding Hammond, when you have an external Leslie (ECHO) It has a very good sound... It is a BOAT ANCHOR - VERY heavy... but overall a great instrument... Played it in the '80's - Anyhow.. thanks for sharing!! Hammond Concorde!!
I have this exact organ to give away for free! It’s perfect on the outside, needs a little wiring work fixed in the inside! Know anyone who might like it?
That is a Concorde 2300 series organ. The Concorde 2100 series was trouble prone, but the 2300 was pretty stable.
First thing to do is remove each card from its connector and spray the connector and edge down with DeOxit. Then check all of the filter boards for cold solder joints. (I had a capacitor fall right off of the board when I was working on mine. (ALWAYS obey static discharge when working inside of it, those LSI chips are kind of sensitive and very hard to replace.)
Other trouble points little soft flaps on the preset key, that release the locking bar, but can be replaced by a hard flexible plastic.
The "other" leslie tab is for an external leslie. I had a 22R hooked up to mine and it sounded great when flat out.
It is not a tone-wheel organ, but it has its own sounds which can be very close to the B or sounds all their own.
I gave mine away eventually, to a veteran that always wanted one and replaced it with an Allen 705. It sits next to my Hammond E100 and Hammond S6. My wife said one more organ, and she is leaving. I will miss the way that she cooks oatmeal on Sundays.
It's a Hammond Concorde 2300 series. You have there a model 2307 with a contemporary cabinet. I have model 2312 which has the same electronics but has a more traditional cabinet styling. I used to sell Hammond organs and would occasionally give concerts for local organ clubs. The Concorde is a great organ. It has a really gutsy, rich sound especially when played through an external Leslie speaker such as a two-channel model HL722 or 715. I have mine hooked up to a four-channel model 740; however, two of the channels are unused. The B3 is a great organ too, but it has a different tonal profile. The B3 has more of an "edgy" sound that's great for today's gospel, jazz, and rock whereas the Concorde has a rounder, more theatrical/pop organ tonal profile. As others have mentioned, you'll probably need to clean the edge connectors on the circuit boards and will need to replace some capacitors to get rid of the hum. I love the additional percussion harmonics available on the Concorde (the blue tabs). Most organs including the B3 only had 2nd or 3rd harmonics. Try these jazz registrations on the B preset on the upper manual: 88 800 0000, Percussion Fast, 3rd harmonic, Leslie Upper, Leslie Chorale. Now try the same registration except use 3rd and 8th harmonics. Then try the same except use 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th harmonics. There are lots of other possibilities also since the Concorde has sustain which isn't available on a B3: Swiss bells, vibraphone, and other cool effects.
Greg Taylor,
Thank you for all of that insider information.
@ Greg Taylor: an impartial comment with great info on both this great gem and the B3 at last, unlike some other people bashing it totally! i'm sure you know very well what you're talking about sir! many thanks. :-)
I think that switch is the Master waterfall key. It should be marked.
Looks like a X77...I have a X66 and they look similar except for all the rhythm add-ons . It's a Concorde.
always wanted and x77 but never got one. have an a100 and elegante. and a porta b.
I'm still looking for an x66.....
The blue percussion stops are only active with the "B" preset just like on a real B. The 12 daughter boards in these are lotsa trouble but the biggest is the one little ground wire and finger contact for the whole big motherboard, there are 3 of these. The amplifiers are also plugged into finger contacts, don't clean well solder them straight on. These finger contacts on the boards are the biggest problem period, as they are copper or tin not gold.
Bought a T series last year for $13. The ones with the tonewheels have somethin' special in them I swear.
It is from the 1970's I saw one at Lyon and Healy's in Chicago when I went to school at the ACM for organ. I looked it up and found it to be a X-66 introduced in 1967.
James, what's that small mirror on the right for?
Nice self made piece and demonstration.
Sir, I am old and this organ model you must use the color code button on top with paired with what you want in the tabs.
I was referring to the synth effects.
I think? lol
I'm pretty sure it is a all transistor Aurora. How does the sound compare to a B3 with tone wheel? People give these away for free or actually pay you to take them here in Canada
It does not sound anything like a B3, but to play around with people could have a little bit of fun with them. If you could pick one up for little or no money you could find out if you would enjoy an organ, and if you wanted to invest in something a bit more upscale.
NOISE PROBLEM - possible noisy transistors , LSI, contact corrosion or cap. Tab contacts can also be a problem ;( by toggling them on/off can help clean contacts so they work (if they're not). Sustain is different from reverb - SUSTAIN ; The note lingers & gradually fades ; REVERB - the note immediately stops sounding, but like a note/chord played on a pipe organ in a cathedral keeps sounding , like an echo (but it's not an echo) for 2 to more seconds. SUSTAIN/REVERB usually have 2 or 3 settings to vary the length. Tubes in Pe-amp problem? - By the time these organs hit the market , they were well into transistors & LSI. AND it could be the pre-amp or the Main Amp or the Power Supply. I have a C3 (B3, different cabinet) & an X66. Once I got my X66 , I had my baby & no longer much pursued other models. However, going by the pedal board, I know of 2 organs that had those shiny metal-looking pedal keyboards; The X66 , & X77, The Concorde (which was suppose to be a spin-off of the X77). probably had them too , & the Elegante ? I believe the Aurora was a spinet model & the Colonnade was the console model of the Aurora.
It looks like an H model...it may need oil in the tone wheel generator. Open the back if you see 3 or so metal funnels, thats where u oil it with hammond oil or singer sewing machine oil just like a b3. Moisture may cause the noise so put it in a dry place and leave it on to heat it up or get a dehumidifier
Wish this was for sale on my town. I'd take a chance on it. I used to have a Hammond Concorde and it had silver pedals. Cost over $4000.00 new. When we moved I couldn't take it. The NEW hammond XK3 is in the same price range , uses current tech and sounds amazingly like the B3
I played a Lowrey of a similar vintage in the 80's that also had simulated Leslie. Mine needed an hour with a generic music store technician and all of it's problems were solved. They're pretty basic technology for anybody who has any experience fixing instruments. The problem is that the wiring is very thin and sometimes the soldering is not as strong as it should be. They're quite easy to fix. Not sure I'd want to.
As for "rare" I know 2 or 3 places in Ontario that are full of these things. They can't give them away.
Good price and nice rock and roll organ. Nice for the Rascals music.
I have the same organ, i played the leslie and Chorus together for another unique sound. Finally found a leslie to go with it, and now the leslie is plugged into the 9 hole connection on back of hammond organ.and sounds great. I dont have the switch, just the tab...slower activation between having leslie turn on and off
That crackling sound appears to be leaky capacitors in the amp. May need to be recapped.
This looks like the big brother of the T-500 at my parents’ house. This one has similar controls and features but more of them, and a bigger pedal keyboard. The T-500 is a tonewheel organ but I’m not sure I’m going to accept the offer to take it to my house. I would rather try to find a B3. I have no idea what a mid seventies era T-500 might be worth.
If you get a B3 you will love it. If you get a mid 60's B3 it goes to the next level.
the buttons labled AB C and D are different variations on your lower left hand arpeggio and on your far left top are what looks like a brown and white switch this should work the other switches you said don't work they are colour coded so white works all white tabs etc hope it helps
James..i had an old Lowery organ that did the same...if not worse...i located the volume control - under the foot pedal - and sprayed a little "contact cleaner" inside the control...(with everything off and unplugged of course) and it stopped completely....seems humidity corrodes the contacts a little....was an easy fix
Very interesting! I was playing with the expression pedal, and for a moment it went away, but then it came back.
The volume pedal in these is optical and noiseless. They do go bad in the way volume can't be shut down fast, it fades down slowly. Remove every connector in these organs and clean and reinsert. Noises will go.
my thoughts? it's a collector's item, unique, $300...if you don't purchase it, James, I will think you are odd. Of course, it's Sep 25 when you entered, it's probably gone, by now. IT sounds SWEET!
Beautiful machine!!!!!!!!! I have two, the Hammond Concorde with Chrome pedals in the contemporary cabinet, and I have the traditional cabinet one. Also, having the same issues/problems as this one! (both of mine having the sound issues, including a third one that I have (a Hammond Commodore)-
Now that's interesting, if you are having the same problem, I know someone out there knows how to repair the organ. When things go wrong it is often the same thing that goes each time. I knew a person who repaired monitors for computers, and he was so sure what was wrong with certain models when they came in for factory repairs he would just replace the part without even checking it out until the part had been replaced.
I find that sometimes when I have the Leslie on, that sometimes the crackles don't happen. I'm not sure how to fix it though, except, when I leave them on for a good while, it seems to subside. Sometimes, the crackles sort of occur when I'm actually playing, and I can hear the sound of the drawbars start to fade and go out. I've yet to have any of mine fixed, as I can't find anyone in my region that will work on them. The percussion sounds only play when you have the top registration key is pressed (Drawbars and percussion)-though sometimes, the percussion crackles in and out and just stops working.
Played one at the Wurlitzer Store in Dixie Square Mall in Harvey ill. The same mall they made the Blues Brothers movie scene.
LESLIE UPPER & LESLIE LOWER need to be pushed DOWN at all times for the LESLIE that is in the SIDE of the CABINET to work. Then you press LESLIE CHORALE for the SPEED TO SLOW DOWN. When you push that tab back up number 3, in that section it makes the LESLIE SPEED UP. We had a SIMILAR ORGAN but a lot newer in our old church.
you can add reverb tot the sustain