The Hammond A-100 Organ, History, How it Works, Maintenance, Operation and Features.
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- Опубликовано: 2 дек 2022
- This video gives the story of why the Hammond Organ was created, how it works internally (generates notes with tone wheels), how to add oil annually, and how to use the drawbars, keyboards and other features of the organ, demonstrated by Tyler of Boss Organ, in Somerville, Massachusetts.
Although I use the word "electromagnet" in the description of how it works, what you see is actually a permanent magnet (the rod) with a coil of wire mounted at one end. When a tooth of a tone wheel comes close to the tip of the magnet, the magnetic field is strengthened slightly, which induces a tiny current in the coil. When the tooth passes by and the tip of the magnet then faces a gap between the teeth on the tone wheel, the magnetic field is reduced, which induces a current in the coil in the opposite direction. 
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My father worked at Hammond for 42 years. He was their veneer guru. If you touch a Hammond organ, you touch veneer he laid up. We had an M3 which I was supposed to learn. After two years of lessons, it was determined I could not carry a tune if I could put it in a bucket. I became an engineer instead.
I am a traditional pipe organist but I once worked for a church that had a B3 in the choir loft and no pipe instrument. Hammond organs are fascinating and I enjoy the unique registration challenges they present. You can create almost any sound using the drawbars.
Principal and Flute type is easier, than lingual stops.
Excellent explanation of Hammonds original tonewheel technology and how it all works. I played a C-3 in church for several years when I first transitioned from piano to organ
What a sound, what a machine, and this guy knows what he's talking about, we're losing people like this!
Glenn C. Koenig | This was the MOST VALUABLE (yelling just a little bit!) RUclips video ever, and I've watched more than 2.72 million YT videos (estimate) so far. Thank you for sharing your knowledge fine sir
Glad my explanations here were helpful to you!
I lubricated my L100 and M101 this morning. By the time i'd removed the rear panels and shifted the hefty beasts around towards the window, (so I could see what the heck I was doing) i was ready for a cuppa and a sit down. Later, armed with my mini torch, my glasses, my syringe and my special Hammond oil, i approached each instrument. I feel a great sense of peace now, i've made a note of the date and i will repeat the process in exactly one year's time. ✌️ 🇬🇧
I keep my L143 and M111 with backs convenient to access at all times. December is basic servicing month for these and the two Leslies I have.
😂 I understand. Well done!
so cool! always wondered this
Fascinating insight into the workings of the Hammond
Good summary and explanation of the A100. In a side note re: the B3, it's interesting that I can find no reference to Bill Rieger anywhere in reference to the B3. Bill Rieger worked for Hammond for 35 years or so and was Director of Engineering and Research at Hammond. He led the team that created the B3. He was a brilliant electrical engineer, and had a major hand in what because the B3. He's never mentioned.
thx for the video
In the early 1970s, I worked on all of Hammond's organs and was one of the very few techs who rebuilt the vibro scanner in the home, saving a lot of money. The scanner, next to the run motor, would get too much oil and stop working.
Such a beautiful instrument.
My first real job out of college was at Boosey and Hawkes in London, quality checking Hammond A100s and other models as they came off the production line. I wasn't allowed to play music on the organ, just check the notes methodically, so as a budding musician in the sixties, I didn't stick it out for long.
I grew up playing the J-100; the 'fake' Hammond. This video taught me a lot.
This is very helpful. thanks for posting!
Thank you for the information and the upload. Very interesting.
Awesome! A great respect to the guy, such a basic and clear presentation! You should put his link in description so people can find him when needed.
www.bossorgan.com/ This is the web page for Tyler, owner of Boss Organ, and the person who showed us how to add oil and operate the controls of the organ.
Thanks!
Excellent video, thank you so much for sharing this information information with the world
This was incredibly useful for me, thanks a lot Tyler, Glenn!
Glad my explanations here were useful for you!
I have the exact Hammond clock and 3 generations of the Hammonds. CV. A-100 and the H-111. Love to play them and one has been MIDI modified.
Oh my ... you even have the clock. Wow!
I've got one just like it... Serial #13992. Awesome organ...with a stock 122, it's over the moon.
thanks for the video.
Tyler is the BEST!
Agreed! I bought my B3 and 122 from him about 10 years ago. I went to his shop - wow! A Hammond playground, not to mention Fender Rhodes and Marshall amps jammed in there.
Thanks!
Amazing video, as someone just now learning to play a Hammond organ, I learned a lot here.
Glad my explanations here were useful!
Gia!...hammond è Unico..!..e rimarra Unico!..
Very cool clock, nothing like a b3.
I believe "Whiter Shade of Pale" by Procul Harum was recorded on this.
I think so. Many rock songs had an organ player using a Hammond; it was very popular, before synthesizers came into common use. When the Doors did "Hello I Love You," there's a break where only one sound is heard, a glissando that descends, then ascends again. I don't know for sure but there are some theories that they achieved this by rewiring the basic power circuit in the organ to allow the motors to be shut off but keep the amplifiers on. That way the tone wheels slow down (descending notes) and resume speed when the motors are started up (in the correct sequence) again.
On a M103 ,Matt Fisher did it !
So incredibly interesting to me and well done. I'm definitely misunderstanding the tonewheel/drawbar/key relationship and mapping. Does each tonewheel module comes as a "pair" for a fundamental and overtone pitch - i.e. is that why they are in pairs? Does each key on the keybed have its own dedicated tonewheel, or can a single key trigger/map to multiple tonewheels? Can a given tonewheel produce only a single fundamental pitch, or can it be sped up/slowed down to produce different pitches?
Can’t believe whoever sold this Organ gave no indication the tonewheel generator needed periodic oil.
Why do you think some people never do an oil change on their car ?
@@lauralhardy5450 Ha,ha - yes, you’re right - I always used too, every 6,000 miles on the older cars. Only habit keeps me checking the dipstick when there’s really no need on modern vehicles- warning lights for everything. Best wishes
This is really interesting - I'm happy to have stumbled across it 🙂
I'm keen to get an organ similar to this and there are LOADS going for cheap/free in my local area.
For transit purposes, do you know whether the top section generally separates from the upright speaker section (without too much meddling with or disruption of the circuitry)?
the ones that are free, are not tone wheel organs
I do not believe the bottom of the A-100 van be separated.
No I bet there are none similar. Only a few hammonds are desirable, the rest no one wants. any free or cheap are not A100, B3, C3 everyone knows those sell several thousand, any others free or cheap will be the oddball models or electronic ones that sound nothing like these.
Grab the best one you see ! A fantastic old musical technology . Do some research on the foam pad sitting on top of the TWG if I am not mistaken . If it is foam it may have disintegrated and caused mayhem in the moving parts of the generator . I think that the foam was discontinued after a CERTAIN DATE SO IT WOULD BE GOOD TO BUY one of the later A-100's .
Can you explain why the motor of the tone generator only is used at the beggining? is that because the valves after that work as a memory and once the tone is generated it is kept stored inside a memory valvulated circuit? I really would appreciate an explanation about that
Sure. The motor actually has two parts, which can be thought of as if there were actually two separate motors. One is a synchronous motor which is designed for very accurate speed, but has very little torque (rotational power). The other is an induction motor, which has more torque, but cannot be relied upon to run at exactly the right speed. If the speed varies, then the notes will "warble" and be off key. The start switch, the spring loaded one that you push first, energizes the induction motor to get everything up to the approximate speed. Once it has reached full speed, you switch on the other switch which supplies power to the synchronous motor. You then let go of the start switch, as the induction motor is no longer needed and will only serve to interfere with the accurate speed of the synchronous motor.
In clocks, there is so little work for the motor to do (turn the hands on the clock face) that a separate induction "start" motor would be overkill. In the Hammond clocks, there is small shaft that protrudes from the back of the case which you twist to get the synchronous motor going right after you plug it in. In Telechron® Clocks (later bought out by General Electric), a special circuit within the motor gets it going without human intervention. If you have a power failure, the Hammond clock will not self start, so the time it shows is the exact time the power failure occurred. In the Telechron Clocks, they will start up again when the power is restored, so you know how long the power failure lasted (how "behind" it is from true time), but you don't know when the failure occurred. If you have one of each in the house, then you know both things.
To answer the rest of your question, no the valves (tubes) do not work as a memory; they only work as amplifiers of the signals generated by the tone wheels, much the same way a guitar amplifier takes the very weak signal from the coils in the guitar pickup and amplifies it to produce an audible sound from the loud speakers.
I can't see from the video, are the drawbars labelled in the convention for pipe organs, with "at pitch" notes as 8', octave up 4', 2 octaves and a fifth 2 2/3' and so on?
They have numbers only. Order is 16', 5 ⅓, 8', 4', 2 ⅔', 2', 1 ⅗', 1 ⅓' and 1'. The reason is, 8' is the fundamental and 16 and 5 ⅓ are sub registers.
👍....wow....a fantastic dinosaur......!
Hi, just a correction at 10:38. The 8' drawbar is considered the fundamental, as stated. This is also the "first harmonic," synonymous with the fundamental The 4' is the second harmonic (twice the frequency of the 8' or one octave higher); the 2 2/3' is the third harmonic (three times the frequency of the 8'); the 2' is the fourth harmonic (four times the frequency of the 8' or two octaves higher); the 1 3/5' is the fifth harmonic (five times the frequency of the 8'); the 1 1/3' is the sixth harmonic (six times the frequency of the 8'); there is no seventh harmonic drawbar; and the final 1' drawbar is the eighth harmonic (eight times the frequency of the 8' or three octaves higher). The point of this long and arduous comment is that there never was a seventh harmonic on the Hammond drawbar system. Had there been such a harmonic, the drawbar would be named 1 1/7'. Irrespective of all of this math - the Hammond sounds awesome in every way!
I just realized why they didn’t provide a 7th-harmonic drawbar -- is it because none of the non-octave harmonics are true harmonics? That is, exact ratios to the base frequency? They are all simply using the same set of tonewheels offset by some integral number of semitones? This is probably close enough for the 3rd, 5th and 6th harmonics, but would be too far out for the 7th.
@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 If there were a 7th harmonic drawbar, there would be less than 2 cents error in frequency due to the tone wheel generator. In the real world, the equal temperament seventh harmonic is about 31 cents sharp from the theoretical seventh harmonic! The tonewheel generator was perfectly capable of generating quite accurate equal temperament tones. I believe the absence of the 7th harmonic drawbar was due to an intelligent choice by Laurens Hammond and John Hanert to balance features, performance, manufacturing and end-product cost.
@@billtanguay8905 That’s about a third of a semitone, which is noticeably off. That’s my point. And of course it gets worse from there.
Look at a modern softsynth
like ZynAdd
👍👍👍
Is this for sale ????????????
No, the organ is not for sale. It is privately owned.
Can you tell me sir , what are the likely causes for some keys on my A-100 to be sticking ? To date the only action I have taken is to use a vacuum cleaner in the hope of cleaning any dust or muck from the top without actually removing keys . Not successful I'm afraid .
I would ask this question of Tyler of Boss Organ. His web site is www.bossorgan.com/ and there is a "Contact Us" page on that site with his e-mail address and phone number. I don't know enough about the mechanical construction of the keyboard to answer you.
Each one of those wheels is a tone generator. The number of tone generators along with the vacuum tubes made these organs sound really good. The only thing that sounds better is a pipe organ. Before the great depression, especially back in the 1800s, many wealthy people had enough money to install pipe organs in their homes.
Many of these organs were self playing.
Pipe organs never had spinning speakers, though.
It's correct that pipe organs never had moving baffles (or speakers lol). However, I believe the Gulbranson church organ actually had speakers mounted in a round piece of wood and spun around on a circle for the "celeste" sound. It was really something to hear because of the massive amount of air being moved about.
@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 In a pipe organ, each pipe can be thought of as an individual speaker being driven by its own free running tone generator and amplifier.
If you do that every year, you'll have a puddle of oil under it after a few years - helps to lubricate the floor for moving the organ around.
As i mentioned in the video, this organ hadnt been oiled in numerous years, so i put in extra. If oiled annually , one eyedropper in the run motor cup and two eyedroppers in the funnels is appropriate.
I thought I was gonna enjoy a 11-minute concert
Great job but how about wooly bully watch it now 😅
9:21 Just a note (heh) that you’re not hearing exactly that G, which would be 2 ** (7 ÷ 12) ≅ 1.4983 times the frequency of middle C, but a frequency which is exactly 1.5 times that of middle C (a “perfect fifth”).
9:36 Similarly, that note is not the E which is 2 ** (2 + 1 ÷ 3) ≅ 5.0397 times the frequency of middle C, but a note which is exactly 5 times the frequency of middle C.
I must say it is a pleasure to run into someone that understands not only the Hammond but harmonic progression. Wonder if you are old enough to have read Hemholtz, "On the Sensation of Tone?"
Also I would like to point out that the Hammond organ may be considered the first Additive Synthesis synthesizer.
Where is the Leslie switch?
Maybe this organ wasn't equipped with Leslie. Leslie was optional from another company. Possibly the organ was used as pipe organ replacement, so no need for Leslie.
@@verkehrsteilnehmer-berlin - This organ has a Leslie switch, but we did not cover that in this video, as a Leslie is optional with the A-100, unlike the B3 and C3 which do not have a built in power amplifier and speakers. The switch is often mounted at the front edge of the keyboard area, at the left. The Leslie speaker that this owner has only has one speed (fast), so the switch has 3 positions, internal speakers, Leslie Speaker, or both.
the technician seemed pretty annoyed at the clients actual interest in the thing lol maybe he didnt wanna be filmed but that guy wanted to leave so bad
I am the technician doing the explanations in the video. Your assessment i false, i happily answered all the clients questions and even agreed to do that explanation TWICE so that Glenn could video it 2nd time.
Never destroy a working musical instrument. You may just take away from a kid the possibility for him to make a career as a musician, GIVE AWAAY old but fucntionnal music instruments,....ALWAYS.
Yes! A friend of mine once called me to say that someone had delivered a Hammond Organ to the local dump. Fortunately, he caught them while it was still intact. I called Tyler at Boss Organ right away. He returned my call and exclaimed Holy (something you can't say on television)! He put me in touch with someone he knew that lived in the same town as that dump who promptly showed up and rescued it.
Yes! My friend Colin Bradley saved that A100, it now has a bunch of Boss Organ mods (booty bass and Lunchbox) and you can see/hear him play it with his MA based band “Sundog Organ Trio”