So, I've been having trouble with my ticker of time recently. It used to hurt when I thought too hard. It bled constantly into the surrounding tissue which resulted in it turning blue. So I went to a specialist and we decided that I have it removed. The problem is, the specialist said, in order to carry on living, I needed something to fill the void.
So I ended up with an organ of a totally different vein..
A 1960's Hammond L-122 Electric Spinet Organ ?
(not my pictures by the way, will take some soon)
Its a valve amplified tonewheel organ, with spring reverb and valve driven vibrato. The 15W power amp consists of two EL84's and two 12AX7 pre's which goes into two 12" drivers (a mid voiced and bass voiced in this model) The circuit is powered by a 5U4 rectifier (massive thing!)
It has a percussion amp and drawbars to change the attack and tone (basically combinations of octaves and thirds and fifths and things, don't know much about it), also with a couple of presets. It has middle and upper keyboard manuals and a set of foot pedals for the lower manual.
For someone who's never really been exposed to an organ, its an amazingly interesting thing mechanically and electrically. I was blown away when I took off the back cover.
Basically, the tones are generated by an dc motor driven axle with a number of thin discs along its length that have offsets that rotate past their respective electromagnets. When the offset part of the disc passes through the magnetic field, it generates a current in the coil around the magnet, an identical concept to how a guitar string and a pickup works (sorry if I'm boring the knowledgable :-[). There are then various filters that the signal goes through to get the correct pitches for each note.
Saw this thing on gumtree and I had to have it. Have been listening to a lot of The Doors recently and it has got my GAS going for a keyboard/piano/organ. Settled on this as it was a deal I couldn't turn down.
As for the sound, for something that has never been maintained (retubed, calibrated, etc), its absolutely awesome! Warm as a summers day and very colourful. Apparently the L-series organs were designed by Hammond to be competitive with pipe organs in churches, so it lacks a bit in the department of the typical jazzy electric organ sound (in terms of keyclick and other such things). However, there are couple of simple and also some very intensive modifications that can be done to "remedy" this. I also have a couple of other things in mind like an effects loop and line out (for a potential leslie cab in the future ?, might even try build one!).
When I saw the price, I actually thought it would be great base to convert into a guitar amp (everything is there, speakers, transformers, tubes etc) but then I heard this thing and saw its condition..
Would love to hear your comments ?
