Talk:Hammond organ/Archive 1

How About A Picture
what does ths Hammond Organ look like? I wouldn't know looking at this page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.30.149.90 (talk) 06:10, 13 November 2007 (UTC) [Modified to remove pointless profanity and invective in an otherwise valid point. Note to author of comment: insulting people is usually a *bad* way to get what you want. -Fenevad 13:30, 14 November 2007 (UTC)]

Done 151.201.246.24 (talk) 16:07, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Copyright issues
Much of this text is taken from the linked Wiki page -- do you have permission from the copyright owner(s) to do this?

I see that HammondWiki is under the Open Content License: is this compatible with the GFDL?

Technically, we can't even use GFDL-licensed text without paying attention to credits and changes, and the OPL is even more specific. We can use the text, but we must cite its source and note the fact that it has been modified. --LDC

RMS doesn't seem to think the OpenContent License is even a free documentation license at all: "This license does not qualify as free, because there are restrictions on charging money for copies. We recommend you not use this license" (source: Comments on the OpenContent License).

The OPL does place restrictions on the use of the text. But Wikipedia's use doesn't violate them, so I'm restoring it. However, I included a notice that other uses of this text may not be as free as use of Wikipedia text in general. If someone else trips on that, that's their problem. --LDC

Note: the HammondWiki material is licenced under the OPL, which is incompatible with the GFDL, and so cannot be copied here, except by the original contributors of that material. The Wikipedia submit form explicity requires submissions to be GFDL-licenced, which cannot be done without violating the OPL. The Anome 10:48 12 Jun 2003 (UTC)

The licensing tags for the two pictures of organs is incorrect - the images are tagged as "currency". Does the uploader know what the correct tags should be? Otterhound 03:22, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Article name
Shouldn't the article name be Hammond organ?
 * I thought it was. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.202.109.55 (talk) 08:41, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Key click
I believe that the key click was not originally a defect. It was purposely added in about the 3rd generation of organs to add attack to the sound.
 * Hi, this is a subject for electric repair/modification specialists. Though I am not one, organ repairer Paul Doerr, of ORGANized SERVICES has penned a little document entitled Key Click in Organs. He says that "Key click in organs is the percussive sound in the speaker that occurs at the moment when a movable key contact meets a stationary key contact or bussbar while a key is being depressed. That sound may be a single sudden audio spike, or a series of audio spikes as the contact bounces on the bussbar before coming to rest and achieving good electrical continuity." Doerr goes on to say that "Key click occurs randomly because, if there is zero voltage on the signal at the moment of contact, there will be no extraneous signal transients caused by contact bounce.  The higher the instantaneous voltage at the moment of contact bounce, the higher will be the amplitude of the transients; therefore the higher the audio volume of the key click." Doerr says that "Many organs, including most if not all of the early Hammond Organs, use direct audio keying and are therefore subject to key click." For Doerr's webpage, where the full text is available, see http://www.organizedservices.com/keyclick.htmNazamo 20:07, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Just to amplify the above, the keyclick is a result of how hammond makes sound. However, Laurens Hammond thought it sounded bad, and as the years went by they got better and better at engineering this sound out of the final product (see H and T series and later LSI models). Ironically, most hammond inthusiasts love the key click and thus hate those later models. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.252.129.150 (talk) 21:16, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Categories
I've put this into category:electronic music instruments as it seems the best fit, but category:amplified instruments is another possibility. It seems silly to create a special category:electric musical instruments as AFAIK this will be the only article to belong in it, and not in these existing two categories. But that's really where this article belongs; The Hammond is neither electronic nor amplified, strictly speaking, it's purely electric. I'm very interested in other views. Andrewa 20:57, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hammond tonewheel organs are not electronic because they don't use microchips, but they are certainly amplified, despite the above comment. Every Hammond organ requires an amplifier in order to make sound. No acoustic sound emanates from a Hammond organ, it's an amplified elecro-mechanical sound, and therefore category:amplified instruments is the perfect category.Mr Pillows (talk) 08:16, 19 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Hammond organs use electronic circuitry to amplify and shape the sound. "Electronic" doesn't mean microchip.  Vacuum tube circuits are electronic too.  The reason a Hammond organ is not an electronic instrument is that the ultimate source of the sound is the mechanical tonewheels, not an electronic oscillator.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.201.124.239 (talk) 03:20, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Sound Clip
The Hammond is a very distinct sound. Once you hear it once, you hear it everywhere. However, this article is lacking a sound sample! I'm sure I could find a sample of a Hammond out there somewhere, but I'd be afraid of the copyright ramifications. Is there a generic source for free sound samples? I did find this site, and I suspect that the owner of the samples would be okay with letting them go. But I'd rather someone with a bit more experience with rights-clearing handle it. http://www.rimboy.com/hammond/ The Leslie Speaker article might benefit, too. Especially if you can find a sample both with and without the spinning speaker. --Mdwyer 01:35, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Inconsistent dates
At one point the article states: "The last production lot of motorized organs was produced in 1975, although a few were assembled from spare parts in 1976." but then later we have: "Though the last analog Hammond organ came off the assembly line in 1974..." I don't think both of these can be correct, so this needs to be fixed, but I don't know which date is correct. Osmodiar 10:30, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

___________________

You should also include that Suzuki bought the Hammond name and restarted making organs in the early 1990s, as well as organ synth modules like the XM-1. They've established a full line of products including Leslies. All are synth based.

_____________

New Section: History
I've done some reasearch and collated the following information about the history of the Hammond Organ. What do you think I should do with it? I could start a new page and link it from the Hammond Organ page, or I could put it on the main page, or I could cut down the amount of information and put a summary on the main page:


 * I think it would be great in an article of its own. But it needs sources. Where did you get this information? Andrewa 05:38, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Andrewa: Hmmm. All over the internet, and I didn't collect sources. I will look into this again, and list the sources. I guess this has to do with verifiability. NostinAdrek 14:06, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Wrong Patent Number
Patent number is wrong.

I went to www.pat2pdf.org, and downloaded the patent number 1,956,359 as referenced in the article.

However, I got for the correct patent number, and instead of the Hammond, it was for "A Centrifical Governor", Morsbach, et al. I will try to find the actual patent

Davidbrucesmith 21:21, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

The Hammond patent is U.S. Patent 1,956,350. 75.158.3.244 (talk) 03:24, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

How do you control pitch on the Hammond organ?
The article explains how you alter the timbre of the sound of a Hammond organ, by adjusting the relative "weights" of signals from the different tonewheels.

But how do you change the pitch in order to play tunes? Does each key on the keyboard have its own set of tonewheels? Or what? I'd love to know! It's quite an important element to miss out.

Macboff (talk) 22:02, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

I've made a stab at adding some detail about how the tonewheel outputs get routed to generate the final tones. The most logical place to put it seemed to be at the end of the 'additive synthesis' section

Blueminute (talk) 20:56, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Hammond closure
note: Hammond Organ first closed up in the mid-late 80's, not 1975 as stated. As a former product specialist (Bill Dilks), I was with Hammond in Chicago in '81-'82. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.75.140.101 (talk • contribs) 21:10, 27 October 2007 (Moved from article &mdash;Sesquialtera II (talk) 17:27, 1 January 2008 (UTC))

Clones
Seems to me there's a lot of redundancy between the Clones section and the separate clonewheels article. Woun't it make sense to just have a sentence mentioning the clones and leave the rest to the dedicated article?

Blueminute (talk) 21:02, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Prose vs headings with tiny amount of content
The use of many subheadings with a tiny amount of content creates a lot of white space. I changed the section below to prose, and then was charged with removing information and making it harder to read. If you convert the info below to prose, how does this take away info? And how does it make it hard to understand, because it is so simple: for each class, the production years are given, and then a few examples are given of the instrument on recordings. Here is how it looks in the article:

Spinet organs

Two 44-note offset manuals, built-in pedals, internal speakers and amplification.

M

Production years: 1948–1951

M-2

Production years: 1951–1955

M-3

Production years: 1955–1964


 * Booker T. Jones of Booker T. and the MGs used an M-3 on the 1962 recording Green Onions.
 * Pete Dahl of EnginEars used an M-3 and 147 leslie on the self-titled CD EnginEars 2004, Art Lab Records.

M-100 series

Production years: 1961–1968


 * Matthew Fisher of Procol Harum used an M-102 on the 1967 recording A Whiter Shade of Pale.
 * John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin used an M-100 on the 1969 recordings You Shook Me, Your Time Is Gonna Come and Thank You.
 * Tom Currie of Au Revoir Borealis used an M-100 on the 2008 recording Dark Enough for Stars.

144.140.22.4 (talk) 23:54, 17 December 2008 (UTC): The M-100 is not part of the M-series, despite the model name. M-series have waterfall keys, no presets and no reverb. M-100 series have diving board keys, presets and reverb, and are more closely associated with the L-100 series (a cheaper version of the M-100s). Prose can make information difficult to obtain if the reader is forced to read an entire article, when all they want is simple facts and figures. Introducing the spinet series, for example, is a good use of prose to get an overall view of the common features of the series, but once a reader has read that paragraph, they probably only need bullet points on the differences between each model within the series. Creating a paragraph for each model needlessly increases reading time, and difficulty of getting the simple facts. I would never recommend removing prose from the whole article, just from the sections that are essentially simple distinguishing facts.

More complete description of operation
I am complete newcomer to wiki, hope I don't mess up too much. While the description of operation seems correct as far as it goes it was clear that it was not complete. I have found this:-


 * The North Suburban Home Organ Society
 * Eastern Massachusetts' Most Progressive Group for Those Who Love the HAMMOND ORGAN

http://www.nshos.com/contents.htm How Does a Hammond Work? This is a much more comprehensive, and seems to me at least self consistent and complete, description of the operation of the tonewheel organ. It even include valve amplifier theory and the speakers.

http://www.nshos.com/temperament.htm Equally Tempered Scale

And other very good related sections.

I am probably not going to attempt to contact the publisher or to attempt integration of any of this material into the Wiki myself however I thought that it might be worth noting here since I think that it is really good and could improve the article.

Threebs (talk) 01:28, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Inaccuracy on X66 - X77 regarding Ethel Smith
She never in her career ever played anything but a B series model organ professionally and in fact, she insisted on that wherever she performed. --phil98107 13:37, 30 September 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ps98107 (talk • contribs)

Duplicated Text
Part of the text under "Console organs" is duplicated from the first paragraph into the following areas. This needs editing. - KitchM (talk) 23:37, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

removed unsourced stuff
in the last few years the popularity of modern Hammond Organs and Clones (see "Clones" below) has increased due to greatly improved sound and portability, however, Vintage Hammond tonewheel organs are often preferred among many traditional organ enthusiasts, the most popular models also having tube amplifiers. Some of the later Hammond models combine tonewheel generation with solid-state amplifiers, with the latest models of that era being fully solid state.


 * this stuff was removed, if we can find some citations then we can include andyzweb (talk) 18:55, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

'Phonic wheel'
Some added a sentence stating about the tonewheel that "This device was known in the late 19th Century as the "phonic wheel". No. The article on Poul la Cour describes the phonic wheel as: "a synchronous motor driven by a tuning fork, which used an electromagnet to rotate the cogwheel of the motor by one tooth for each vibration." The Hammond tonewheel is simply a (conducting) steel disk with teeth turned by a camshaft creating tones by induction. (More here) A comparison of the two should probably be documented. I'm removing the assertion. Twang (talk) 07:45, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Hammond tone cabinet section confusing
I can not understand the whole "Hammond tone cabinet" section! (This is a subsection of "Speakers" section).

Some specific problems:
 * "The speaker organ emerged in Mexico for the 50's was discovered by ... ", but what is the speaker organ?
 * "The technique was very popular, (...) Currently very few people know this technique", but which technique?
 * How is it related to "Speakers" section?

But the issue is broader, as I've written above, I can not understand the whole section at all! --79.21.209.166 (talk) 13:37, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

p.s. I've found: the section was added with this dif, and renamed and moved with this edit. --79.21.209.166 (talk) 13:39, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Notable Users
Where's Gregg Rolie!?!? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.246.34.60 (talk) 11:44, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

This is as good a place as any to say I'm clearing up the article a bit. I've found my copy of Vail, and the models can be sourced to that fairly simply. The list of notable users, which is still scattered around the place, is going to have to be cleaned up - and the bottom line is unless it's specifically listed in a reliable source that the Hammond was important, it can't really go in. Hundreds of thousands of Hammonds have been sold and people used them as a de facto instrument all through the 60s and 70s, so if we tried to list every single notable musician who touched one in the article, we'd run out of space. I know some of you will be upset that your favourite player doesn't make the final grade, for which I can only apologise in advance. Ritchie333 (talk)  (cont)   19:44, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Chop organ (unsourced, moved from article)
A "Hammond Chop" is a slang term used to refer to any Hammond organ that has been modified to fit into one or more roadcases for easier transportation. Moving an unmodified Hammond organ generally requires special lifting equipment, a van and several people. By "chopping" the organ into separate sections it becomes easier to lift and transport the components.

In the UK, the expression is 'split', and an early example of a split Hammond M102 was the Edgware factory-built white-lacquered instrument used by Stevie Winwood of The Spencer Davis Group in 1966. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ritchie333 (talk • contribs) 10:29, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Archived article "Clonewheel Heaven"
I see in the article's editing window that a magazine reference was commented out because the URL no longer returns the proper article. I found an archived version of it at the Wayback Machine:


 * Original URL, goes to the wrong article.
 * "Clonewheel Heaven", Keyboard magazine, November 2004, archived on January 22, 2008.

Cheers! Binksternet (talk) 18:39, 3 August 2013 (UTC)


 * I had a look through the archived content but most of the facts it states are already in the article cited to other sources. The only thing I might add is a note on Diversi, because (according to Faragher), Joey DeFrancesco "defected" to them from Hammond. Ritchie333  (talk)  (cont)   09:38, 5 August 2013 (UTC)


 * That's a good idea. Diversi has almost no presence on Wikipedia (a single listing at clonewheel organ), but they deserve something more than that. Binksternet (talk) 17:20, 5 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Okay, Diversi is now an article. See it before it gets speedy deleted! (just kiddin') Ritchie333  (talk)  (cont)   19:46, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Percussion
Last sentence lists two companies, almost as if selling products.. "Older Hammond models produced before the 3 series organs (such as the B-2 and C-2) do not have the harmonic percussion feature. Aftermarket percussion effects can be added using devices from Trek II and from the Electro Tone Corporation. Trek II and Electro Tone~"

Both have links going back to their products page.

It just seems like spam to me.

It seems like spam to me too---as does the intro. No citations, specific references to products, etc... Pygmy goat (talk) 20:23, 30 April 2014 (UTC)


 * What revision of the article are you looking at? In any case, Faragher's book does actually mention the Trek II, and cites it as a popular aftermarket device for pre-B3s. But I don't think it's been in the article since well before it went to GA. Ritchie333  (talk)  (cont)   21:54, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

X-66
I've been following the back and forth between and  about whether the X-66 is any good or not. The main source I have used, Scott Faragher's book, pulls no punches in criticising the X-66 as expensive and unpopular, however he doesn't go as far as saying it has a poor sound, merely "it's not a B-3". This extract from the American Theatre Organ Society journal says the X-77 was considered "one of the finest Hammond models". How should we proceed with this? Ritchie333 (talk) (cont)  10:20, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

"120 Years" link
I am concerned about this edit. I have left the link in for the minute because it includes patent diagrams that aren't available on the article. However, the accompanying text, to be blunt, isn't that good including POV such as "created one of the most popular and enduring electronic instruments ever built", and "The Hammond Organ became popular with Jazz, Blues and Rock musicians up until the late 1960′s [sic] and was also used by ‘serious’ musicians" (ouch!), factual inaccuracy such as "This method of creating tones was maintained until the mid 1960′s [sic] when transistors replaced tone wheels" (the last T500 rolled off the assembly line in 1975), and the YouTube link might be a copyvio. Does anyone have any thoughts over whether it should stay or go? Ritchie333 (talk) (cont)  12:17, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Tom Scholz
How can there be an article this long dedicated to the Hammond organ, without a single mention of Tom Scholz? The man put the Hammond all over the radio, and his band has the biggest selling debut album of all time, which was driven by a Hammond B-3. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.54.5.255 (talk) 15:11, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Because Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information and the article would be worse if we had every single person who had ever played a Hammond (eg: me). List of Hammond organ players is thataway. <b style="color:#7F007F">Ritchie333</b> <sup style="color:#7F007F">(talk) <sup style="color:#7F007F">(cont)  15:21, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
 * This article is not about musicians who use the Hammond B-3, but about the various models of the Hammond organ. If you think there is something that should be added, you are welcome to add it.  Tom Scholz has his own article (which makes no mention of the Hammond B-3). <span style="font-family: Gill Sans MT, Arial, Helvetica; font-weight:140;"> General Ization   Talk   15:23, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20061106101906/http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jul03/articles/hammondb3.asp to http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jul03/articles/hammondb3.asp
 * Added tag to http://b3world.com/hammond-techinfo3.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20150218200144/http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jan01/articles/korgcx3.asp to http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jan01/articles/korgcx3.asp
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20140322001058/http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep02/articles/rolandvk8.asp to http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep02/articles/rolandvk8.asp
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Notable Users ambiguity
Please clarify pronouns and "joining" in this sentence: "Gregg Allman became interested in the Hammond after Mike Finnigan had introduced him to Jimmy Smith's music, and started to write material with it.[120] His brother Duane specifically requested he play the instrument when forming the Allman Brothers Band,[121] and he was presented with a brand new B-3 and Leslie 122RV upon joining." GenacGenac (talk) 19:22, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

Audio
The "A single note (C) played on a Hammond organ" audio file in the section: Keyboards and pedalboard is not a single note. It is a manual note played with a pedal note: 2 tones, not one. The description is incorrect. Maineartists (talk) 17:40, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

Tone Generation / Harmonics
Currently the article states Rather than produce harmonics that are exact multiples of the fundamental as in equal temperament, it uses the nearest-available frequencies generated by the tonewheels.

Issues with that phrasing are:


 * 1) Implying that equal temperament contains exact-multiple harmonics. Not really. "Equal temperament" has exact octaves (2n), but nothing else in it is an exact multiple. (contrast to "Just temperament(s)", which do contain some additional exact multiples, apart from octaves)
 * 2) Hammond's harmonics are exact multiples for octaves as well, and those drawbars are marked as white (1x 2x 4x 8x). In contrast, Hammond's drawbars for inexact multiples (3x 5x 6x and sub-third) are marked as black.

Please consider replacing with this phrasing:

The octave-spaced harmonics (1x 2x 4x 8x) are exact multiples, and are controlled by white drawbars. The other harmonics are not exact multiples, but are using the nearest-available tonewheel frequencies, and are controlled by black drawbars. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.204.96.222 (talk) 00:07, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

Equal-temperment has nothing whatsoever to do with a tone's harmonics. Equal temperment refers to the tuning of the fundamental-tones of a musical instrument's notes (the C, the D, etc.)

Just temperment achieves various harmonies among the 7 notes of the diatonic-scale, but only in a certain key. Equal temperment makes each of the scale's 12 half-steps equal (in frequency-ratio), enabling playing that will sound equally good in any key. Helmholz didn't like equal-temperment. He said that it made piano-chords sound like a "Hellish row". But equal temperment sounds fine to us now. Sometimes people notice that a major 3rd sounds a bit "bright" (sharp), but that just adds to the color.

But temperment, such as Pythagorean, Just, Equal and Meantone, is only about the fundamentsl-tones of the instrument's notes.

A note's harmonics consist of the fundamental tone. (I'll call it "F"), and its 1st harmonic with frequence 2F, and its 3rd harmonic with frequency 3 F, etc.

The fundamental is also called the 1st partial.

The 1st harmonic is also called the 2nd partial, and likewise the 2nd harmonic is also called the 3rd partial. ...etc.

The article confuses the tone-harmonics with the instrument's temperment (version of the diatonic-scale).

That error in the article, of course, has to be changed. Unless someone else changes it soon, I'll change it when I get around to it.

Jack McDuff
The mention of McDuff says " "Brother" Jack McDuff switched from piano to Hammond in 1959" and cites p236 of Historical Dictionary of Jazz By John S. Davis which says "After playing piano with Johnny Griffin and Max Roach in Chicago in the 1950s, he switched to organ and formed his own group in 1959." It's important to note that this isn't saying he switched to organ in 1959, but that he switched to the organ, and then later in 1959 he formed his own group. He had already switched to organ around 1957 when he played with Willis Jackson. I'll try and reword the article to reflect this.--Jimmyjrg (talk) 00:03, 28 March 2021 (UTC)