Hammond Organ Upgrade

A big thanks to Justin Carroll and Judd Nielsen who came by the studio to help us upgrade our Hammond Organ. We have a B-2 from the early 50′s. When Hammond came out with the B-3 they added a circuit called Percussion. Now, for those who don’t know, this is not a drum machine. This is a circuit which adds upper harmonics only to the beginning of the note. These harmonics decay and only the fundamental tone is left to sustain. This gives each note a percussive quality, thus the term Percussion. The original Hammond percussion units allowed for 2nd order or 3rd order harmonics to be added and there were two options for decay rate, fast or slow, and also two volume levels, normal and soft. The unit that we added yesterday is by Trek II and features an extra 5th order harmonic as well as variable volume and decay levels. Interestingly, all the way up on the sliders is off and down is full on. At first this confused us until we realized that it matches the functionality of the draw bars on the organ. Another feature of percussion is that it only sounds if no other notes are being played on that manual (keyboard). This allows the player to control whether the percussion happens by playing legato or staccato. A great player can use this feature to be very expressive. Sonically, our B-2 is now a B-3.
Hammond Organ Upgrade