My sister had one in our living room. It was a fabulous instrument. She ended up donating it to Marquette University where students still enjoy it today. For me, I now play a Mason and Hamlin grand Piano.
I am not sure but did not the X66 have a different tone generation system with only top octave mechanical tone wheels and freq. dividers for the rest? Yea, it is not a B3 but could do a lot of groovy stuff.
A great tribute, proving that Hammond is more then only B3's. As far as I am concerned the most misunderstood Hammond is however the Novachord. Where the X66 was an answer the Novachord was so far ahead of it's time nobody had yet asked the question. :-)
Great video! I find it diffcult to place it soundwise because I do not know the period and competition that well so I'll gladly take the authors remarks as a reference, It surely looked great anyway. Late 70ties style on a 60ties organ! Those after it styling wise surely look like retrograde steps.
Compared to the X-66 the Concorde is a bloated, boxy, heavy lump of wood that lacks any kind of elegance. I wonder why Hammond stopped making attempts at developing the aestethics of their organs.
Someone gave me an X-66 AND 2 tone Cabs. Can they be run STEREO?? AFTER changing out the power cord and maybe transformer, maybe it will give me some MAJESTIC Hammond Sounds?? Thanks for your very informative Site.
Mike Bracchi, I've got a couple of questions for you. I worked for a Hammond Organ Studio when the X-66 came out. In fact I was the third person in the studio to get to play it when the first one came in. First, I know there was a Leslie designed for it, but I can't remember the model, do you know? At the time I worked for the Studio Laurens Hammond was still living and we couldn't even acknowledge the existence of the Leslie, let alone sell them. :) Second didn't some of the last X-66's produced have the rhythm system built in them? Seems like I can remember this, but I might just be having a brain freeze. Thanks for a great video.
The X-66 didn't come with a Leslie but a similarly designed speaker cabinet though some performers and home organ customers retrofitted their instruments to accept a Leslie.
Electro voice/Leslie was still a separate company (not owned by Hammond) in the early 1970s, but they made a kit to install the Leslie 122 on to the X-66. Our Wisconsin music store probably had one of the last X-66 units made. Before I installed the 122 on the X-66, I didn't think the organ was all that great, but I fell in love with it after the 122 install. The store had a 4800 SF showroom with tile floor. That organ filled the room with fantastic sound! I made an LP recording of that organ before we finally sold the instrument. We had a difficult time finding a customer for the instrument because we were in a small market. The man who bought it lived with his mother and had to install the organ in a small basement room which was too small for the instrument. As they say with pipe organ installations, the room is half the organ. That little basement room was not well suited for that X-66, but the store owner was happy to have the instrument out of inventory. (A few years later I bought the store.)
I would imagine that if anyone had one today and it broke down, perhaps Hammond no longer supports parts for it. I had a Yamaha HS8 that blew one of the main processor chips and no way I could find that part. It was not even a common processor. It was specially made for Yamaha. So I disassembled that and save the bass pedal board and the 2 keyboards. I was able to find a Yamaha HS4. A step down, but better than nothing. Even if I came across one of these Hammond X 66 instruments, I wouldn't accept it. Besides the repairs nightmares, that thing is way too heavy. LOL And frankly, listening to this video, I really don't like the sound of it so much. I much more like the sound that my Korg PA700 produces.
