H-112 -- Bass pedals just up and stopped working

[organick]

...Don't know what serial # but somebody nearby giving away H112 that pedals stopped working but they say all else works...

I just started going to a little church that could use a Hammond but have heard H112 may NOT be good for long term use but I don't think there's a lot of funds to spend organs and/or repairs...

This little church I just started attending has an old Leslie 247 sitting off to the side... Can Leslie 247 work on H112 ?


Question 1 -- Am I at all sane for even considering H112 ? [ now be kind :embarrassed: ]

Question 2 -- What do you think could make bass pedals ubruptly stop working / how to repair ?

Question 3 -- Leslie 2477 compatibility



thanks very much

[indianajo]

I love my H100 organ. Particularly after I restored it, with $200 worth of electrolytic capacitors (I could do it for $100 now). I do classical JS Bach and Tchaikovsky with it, I do combo organ Mancini with it, I do rock Lynyrd Skynyrd with the string bass, it is also suitable for Alman bros B3 vamping and stuff but I don't have a guitar player to play the other parts. It is much more versatile in tone than a B3/C3/A100, and costs a whole lot less.
There are 100 year parts in there, the tone generator, the plated key contacts, the red (film) caps, there are 25 year parts in there, the electrolytic caps. Quite possibly in the church unit many of the power (B+) caps have shorted and dropped out the pedal amp. My percussion in the same chassis was totally dead until I got the power caps replaced up to that point. Or, if it has the transistor pedal amp module instead of the tube one, one of the tantalum electrolytic caps has opened up. I just started at the bottom left power supply and replace 2 e-caps at a time working up, and the electric kazoo receded in the distance and it started sounding like the $5000 that it cost in 1967. but it is not an organ that you can ignore for 60 years and it still operates like a CV. It sounds way better than a CV, IMHO with non-crosstalk bus bars and mixer transformers.
It has a 7 VAC out signal (two actually) which is the old leslie 122 standard analog input voltage but I don't know what a 247 requires. The 120 VAC motor switch will require a separate speed switch on the front like the half moon switches sold by bborgan.com. Bborgan also sells the converter connector, but you'll have to wire your own harness up, I don't think drfishsticks will have a kit directly for this setup. You'll have to drill 2 pins out of the connector also, or replace it with a 6 pin one and delete one of the output channels. The H100 have stereo vibrato which is a pretty good leslie simulator to people who have only heard a leslie in a niche on the wall above the baptism font. People that have hung around smoky lounges with brick walls and a leslie seem to strongly disagree that the Hammond emulation, or any emulation other than a rotary speaker with a verticle axis, simulates a leslie. Anyway, if you are going to drive a leslie with it, you only need one audio channel, the out of phase opposite side channel is superfluous and can be eliminated from the 6 pin lesliie socket.
So, go for it, I recommend, unless you have $600 in your pocket to buy an A100 or something and you could care less about classical music sounds, combo organ sounds, theatre organ sounds, or any of the extra sounds of the H100 over the A100, M3, or B3. It has built in reverb and a celeste vibrato ambient effect which reminds me of playing in a brick church, that is how live the sound is. Who needs a leslie is my opinion, and I have a 400 effect digitech quad 4 box to add and a 120 W amp driving Peavey PA speakers in the same room, if I wasn't pleased with the texture of the sound as it is. It has enough bass power to rattle the chandiler when the caps are replaced, and the bass is real 16' bass, not that fakey B/C3/A100 folded back version. If you play with 10 fingers and 2 feet, the H100 is miles ahead of a M3 or M100 spinet, although there is a strong contingent here that think one hand goes on the leslie switch, one goes on the upper keyboard, and one foot goes on the swell pedal (a la Booker T Jones etc on the M3).

[organick]

THANKS for your RAPID response -- I'll have to digest all details thereof and go from there...

I just didn't want to go pick up H112 and end up with yet ANOTHER dead "cruise ship anchor" to have to dispose of if couldn't get working (they have a BIG half-dead Conn organ that has been deserted on the platform)=-O


? So there won't be any problems with tubes unseating, etc. ???

? And H-112 can sound black-gospel style ???


THANKS AGAIN!

[indianajo]

My early serial number unit #9574, if I turn the volume all the way up it can knock a tube loose in the socket on the percussion/pedal chassis. That makes crackling an can make the pedal softer. #11211 has tighter tube sockets. You can have a bad connection on a grid of a tube that needs erasing and reseating, but mostly the volume will get louder and softer on the early units with the looser sockets. I think there is a trick you can do with silicon grease, rather than putting in the gold plated tube sockets #9574 deserves. The previous owner handled this loose tube socket by setting the console switch to "tone cabinet" which cuts the volume of the main organ, and having a 35-60 W tone cabinet make the major noise away from organ body. Actually if an H100 was totally dead, I wouldn't be afraid of it. Only if the tone generator wouldn't rotate by hand because it was never lubricated. The Tonewheel Generator is as tough as any Hammond, and we had somebody restore an L100 a couple of years ago that sat in the snow in an alley behind a bar in Nome AK for a year or more. Mine, I dropped off the Ryder truck ramp, broke the top and side of the case off, knocked out 6 tubes, broke 7 bricks off the porch pilaster, righted it, installed the tubes, and it made sound, the old caps kazoo sound.
Conns, many said they sounded nice, but a lot of years production they had metal coated plastic bus bars for key switches, and once they wear out, the company that supported them after the bankrupcy has gotten very slow answering the phone. Mostly anything wrong in an H100, you can buy at farnell.com or mouser.com, etc. Or for a slight premium, the Hammond specialist tonewheelgeneral.com in KC, MO. TG answers questions on the phone, though, sometimes they are worth the extra money.
Did I mention, if you adjust the percussion level and harp level and use the glock percussion, you can play honky tonk piano parts with at least as much realism as a Rhodes electronic piano. The only downfall, I think is it doesn't have threes percussion like a B/C3, and you have to do a 6 wire change to some stupid percussion tab like "banjo" to get it back. Lot of gospel records don't use percussion. One other difference to a B/C3, you can't do "Palm glissando" on the diving board keys. Trained piano people like me do finger glissando fine, dragging the fingernails on the key tops, but you see palm glissando on the front edges of the keys on some gospel videos. Too much emotion, not enough technique is my opinion. Some guy bought a bunch of M keys and is converting his H100 to "waterfall keys" by installing them and moving the front rails, but that is a lot of work for not much benefit IMHO.
But, you buy one, you are committed to changing 3 capacitors to prevent wire harness fires almost immediately (unless the church had them done previously). For it to sound right, you need to change 68 more capacitors, and that doesn't include the 115 capacitors on the harp function I didn't do. Include about $70 in tools and a cold winter indoors soldering away, to your schedule if you buy one. The reward is, every 2 caps you put in, it sounds better. You can hear your progress as you go , or hear your mistakes and go back and correct them if you do make one. I made a few bad solder joints, easy to hear when a sound you had before but ugly is now totally missing.
So anyway, I hope you save another of these from the dump. The tonewheel generators are jewels of long life engineering, fine as any swiss watch. And the amps are mostly repairable with common parts.
You can move it with a 4 wheel dolly, the 1200 lb one, the pedal box is strong enough if it is still screwed into the wood case (one I got had the screws ripped out of the case). You tip the organ back and set the front sides on 1" thick boards at the front to lift the pedal locator pins out of the mount bar. Good luck.

[organick]

...you info and enthusiasm is MUCH HELP!!!

THANK YOU!:->

[Wes]

Every time I see black gospel organ playing on YouTube, they are playing a B3 through a Leslie.

An H112 with a Leslie 247 can sound exactly the same....but it can do more than a B3 also. The H100 series was intended by Hammond to replace the B3 but it never really caught on like the B3.

These organs will not sit like the Conn. The Hammond tonewheels are about the only organs with a large, active restoration community. They really can last for a hundred years if you spend a few hours and few hundred dollars every 20 years, oil them once a year, and take care of any problems that pop up as they pop up (rare).

As for broken bass pedals, it could be as simple as the pedals not being inserted correctly the last time the organ was moved.

Which reminds me, I think the H100 series might need the generator locked down to prevent broken wires before moving, but maybe not, due to age. You can tell, if the generator is swinging on springs it needs to be locked down. Indianajo?

Incidentally, my L100 has diving board keys like the H100, I have no problem doing palm glissandi, but they require a bit more finesse than on the waterfall keys. They are also easier to do quickly than slowly.

Wes

[indianajo]

Which reminds me, I think the H100 series might need the generator locked down to prevent broken wires before moving, but maybe not, due to age. You can tell, if the generator is swinging on springs it needs to be locked down.

There are no springs on any of my H100 tone generators. Some idiot serviceman removed the mount bolts on the one at the church in Ohio, and didn't reinstall them, so it is good I moved it upright in a Ryder van. Tipping it without the TG screwed down could break a lot of wires. Worth a check, if you're going to lay the case on the back in a pickup or something, that the 1/2" hex head bolts under the wood TG shelf at 4 corners are screwed in.
I put long life electrolytic (>3000 hours) caps in my #9574, that might last as long as 30 years. You can look them up on the internet now instead of buying the short life caps the electronics store used to put out on the front shelf. The motor and two main high voltage power supply caps were film, probably will last forever. I also used a lot of film and ceramic caps up in the preamps, that should last longer than 100 years at the temperatures up there.

[jdoc]

E,H, L no springs FYI

Every time I see black gospel organ playing on YouTube, they are playing a B3 through a Leslie.

An H112 with a Leslie 247 can sound exactly the same....but it can do more than a B3 also. The H100 series was intended by Hammond to replace the B3 but it never really caught on like the B3.

These organs will not sit like the Conn. The Hammond tonewheels are about the only organs with a large, active restoration community. They really can last for a hundred years if you spend a few hours and few hundred dollars every 20 years, oil them once a year, and take care of any problems that pop up as they pop up (rare).

As for broken bass pedals, it could be as simple as the pedals not being inserted correctly the last time the organ was moved.

Which reminds me, I think the H100 series might need the generator locked down to prevent broken wires before moving, but maybe not, due to age. You can tell, if the generator is swinging on springs it needs to be locked down. Indianajo?

Incidentally, my L100 has diving board keys like the H100, I have no problem doing palm glissandi, but they require a bit more finesse than on the waterfall keys. They are also easier to do quickly than slowly.

Wes

[tonewheel1966]

Or T! IIRC the rule of thumb is self starting motor organs were all non spring models.

[Bobmann]

The H is the sleeper of the Hammond world...IMO, a great sounding instrument.

The first thing to do is go in and clean EVERY contact and connector in the thing, including tube sockets and pots on circuit boards...and there are a lot. This will fix a lot of issues.
If the DB contacts are dirty enough, it will keep the pedals from sounding as well, I have seen this first hand.
Make sure the pedals are installed properly, and the organ is not sitting on some real thick pile carpet.

As far as the Leslie...the only interface box I am aware of that is "plug-and-play" allows hookup to a 122 style Leslie.
I would think that this box could be altered for a 147 style...I do not know how, but I would think someone here could enlighten you.

Here are a couple videos on the care, cleaning and features of the H series.

http://www.youtube.com/user/bobmann107

Bob

[organick]

THANKS TO ALL!!! for your input!!!

The BIGGEST concern at this point is that I am NOT versed on soldering (though I probably could get there)... how long / involved repair / cleaning / where to purchase capacitors, etc. -- right there in sanctuary of this little church... by this "johnny-come-lately" (me) that they don't even know well yet... (so that's why I'm hesitant)

Would need instructions / some documentation of how/where to start, etc....

BUT I AM the type that doesn't NEED a B3/C3, or percussion for that matter... I like the idea of SOMETHING DIFFERENT, even and especially if majority doesn't -- I guess you could say "contrar-ian" --DON'T GOTTA BE what everybody else likes...



You guys/gals are great! Thanks!


PS @Bobmann - I had seen some of your videos already and appreciate your posting them as they offer information (and hope :-) )

[Bobmann]

I would not worry about replacing electronic components just yet...do simple things first.
Do the contact cleaning thing...get some cleaner, or better yet DeOxit...unplug connectors, spray, repeat.
Remove tubes, DeOxit, plug & unplug a few times.

Now see what she sounds like.

It may not be at it's best, but you can get some feel for what future repairs may be needed, and we can go from there.

Where are you located?

Bob

[organick]

Bobmann,

THANKS FOR YOUR REPLY!

Located out on the LEFT coast near LA...

...Great advice it is cleaning/DeOxit...



Best to you & yours!

[jdoc]

T, blanked out there a bit

Or T! IIRC the rule of thumb is self starting motor organs were all non spring models.

exactly....start/run equals spring suspension

[organick]

... I DO know about TG suspension screws on popular models, and have seen on one E### that there WASN'T any...

THANKS for all concerned enough to want me to avoid the GREAT YANKING LOSE of all those wires...

So no, I'm not completely new to Hammond, but I AM completely wanting to make a good decision. I'm only a so-so player that whose first Hammond was a BC (wow I'd never heard of such at the time)... and have played B3, C3, C2, CV, but this H### is new to me...


MANY THANKS TO ALL!


PS -- Actually, I went to an outdoors concert back in the 80's where there was a Hammond Specialist feverishly working on a B3 -- because -- YOU GUESSED IT! Somebody transported it without...