Here are a few tips for firing up a traditional Hammond B3 organ. This is a CLASSIC trick used by some of the top Organ Players in rock and blues! www.universeofkeys.com
Great videos. I grew up with a "second dad" (my best friend's father,) who had a Farfisa Compact Duo going though a Leslie 145. I was blessed to inherit his newer Hammond XK-3c system when he passed a few years ago. Closest thing I'll own to a "real" B3. This pitch bend question always made me wonder how the "Smokin'" solo by Boston was done. When he does those trills you can hear it pitch up slightly before he slides into the next part of the solo. Now I know! :-) Cool stuff, and another example of how innovative musicians pushed their gear to do things they were never designed to do.
In Tom's own words: "I had the organ set up right next to my 12-track Scully recorder, which had a massive flywheel spinning inside it. As I was tracking that solo--which, to this day, I still find to be pretty tricky to play--I reached into the tape machine with my free hand, and, with just the right touch, applied pressure to the flywheel, slowing the tape down during my last note. That resulted in the organ's pitch rising when the tape was played back at normal speed. That wheel had some nasty spokes on it, too. There was real danger involved." From my own experience with an M-100 series organ (the successor to the model M3 Tom used on that album), the start motor wouldn't have the torque to get anywhere near the sort of pitch bend he had on that solo. It's barely powerful enough to get the organ up to speed and doesn't top out much faster than that.
I'm always nervous about pitch bending and tearing the teeth off the starter and the TG. Even the latest genuine (i.e. tonewheel Hammond) is 45 years old and you can't get the parts.
Hi Davey, all I can tell you is I have been doing it w my B3 for 30 years and have never had an issue, they are built to take it!! Maybe I have just been lucky :) Thanks for your comment!
@Universe of Keys It's your technique and also Lauren Hammond's bulletproof design ;). 99.9% of it your technique though, and also your understanding of how the tone generator works so you can get that perfect pitch bend. Some people think that insects will survive a nuclear holocaust but I'm very confident that they'll be dancing and singing to the sound of a 1950s Hammond. I'm a bit of a worrywart to be perfectly honest due to the scarcity of parts, but having said that pitch bending is one of THE best sounds there is that you can do with the Hammond. I love that pitch bend coming from a screaming Leslie. Hammonds though are supposed to be played like there is no tomorrow but my fear is bring that tomorrow to the here and now. I get nervous even using a 9V battery to zap the dendrites that often occur. Having said that the motorboating effect from the dendrites can be really cool and a great effect so it's more of a case of having a Hammond fleet of dendrite and dendrite-free C-3/A-100s (the B-3 never sold over here for some reason, the C-3 was the default Hammond once the A-100 ceased manufacture). Bending the pitch with a zinced-up motorboater has the most amazing sound. Procol Harum's AWSOP was done on an M-102 and is the most iconic song that there is. Even the spinets have a full-bodied sound that can create the most popular song in history, sounding very, very similar to the B/C-3. In one recording they even included the sound of the Leslie motor running and also the turbulence caused by the spinning horns which I thought was really good. I'm just scared that I'll put a very rare Hammond into the scrapyard. In the US there are a lot of Hammond parts (new and old) but in the UK people (i.e. philistines with no taste in music) are like "what's a Hammond?, isn't that the guy from Top Gear who crashed that rocket car" so I'm more in preservation mode so we don't lose them forever. It's sad that you have to pretty much mute a Hammond to keep them around. Seriously in Britain genuine tonewheel original Hammonds are a very, very big rarity. Seriously even trying to find oil is next to impossible, the best we can do is a mixture of kerosene, diesel and heavy naphthalenic oils that are causing more harm than good (a part of me dies every time I see some recommend that stuff). Even Singer sewing machine oil as close as you can get to the original Hammond formula and was interchangeable with Hammond oil is very hard to find. I can get a limited supply of Hammond oil from the US but even that is hard to come across now.
@@daveyr5462 Thats fascinating about the M102 being used for WSOP. I had no idea!! And Dendrites, yeah man had lots of issues with that. There is always something to learn about these beasts and that is what is keeps us all captivated!! Thanks for all the cool info Davey!
@@UniverseofKeys I take back what I said, I had no idea how durable the tone generator is. I’ve just seen Keith Emerson throw an L-101 around on stage, ride it like a bucking bronco and stab knives into it before playing it upside down. Hammonds are more than bulletproof, they are KeithEmersonproof. I think that pitch-bending is the most benign thing you can do to one of these.
Hi! Great question! So if you hit the start switch when it is running it will actually pitch the organ up, and then it might pitch slightly down and come pack up to tune. If you want a dramatic dive bomb effect you turn the organ off and then turn it back on again. Be careful though.... if you turn it off for too long the tone wheels will slow to a stop. So it is a bit of a trial and error situation. A trick I do when recording is I will create the illusion that the organ dives all the way down and then comes back to pitch by reversing the recording half way through the dive . It is a great studio party trick lol. Hope this all makes sense and thanks for your comment! Cheers, Mike
Hi Jake, Here is a video I did on "distortion" with my B3. Hope this answers your question :) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-wopTS9HNjak.html
@@UniverseofKeys Well I'm not too worried now after reading in the comments about how Keith Emerson tortured his Hammonds. 😊 And I thought Sugerloaf trifled with the tape also. It never occurred to me they did this pitch bend trick.
Hi Robert!! ALOT of people agree with that this could damage the organ and there are certainly alot of opinions. I have been using this technique on my B3 for about 35 Years with absolutely no issues. So far so good. Maybe I should give it another 35 years to really make sure ;)
