M3 questions

[ALBATROS1234]

i got a 58' m3 a few days ago i got it playing and more or less all functions work. a couple things i wonder about. 1st why does the tone differ from the upper and lower manuals? what i mean is they both sound similar but i am a 50 year old life long musician and i just notice a slight difference between them as if the lower is not quite as vibrant sounding . next i notice that the highest notes are lower in volume on both manuals and as i play further down the volume seems to get louder and sound fuller toward to lower notes. is this normal or is there something i need to clean or service to get the higher notes to match the volume of the lower notes. if i play the same chord in two octaves i can still hear the higher octave but its definitely not as full. perhaps i have to take apart and clean the drawbar assembly? what is the finish lacquer or shellac?i assume in 1958 they finished wood with nitro cellulose lacquer. the thing is there are a few spots that have crinkled up as well as some that have actually changed to a much darker and become a raised and texturized like tree bark. other spots seem to have little round voids in the tree bark raised areas. these voids remind me of bubbles. within these bubbles i can see what looks like what the finish should be but other than the small circular voids its rough like tree bark in these areas. i wonder if it is lacquer or shellac because i want to try and repair these areas but want to use the correct solvents to perhaps partially re-liquify these areas which are mainly the blocks adjacent to the lower manual and the blocks adjacent to the music stand trough which slides in above the upper manual.i apreciate any input that can give me something to go on with these things. thank you in advance.

[tiredoldgeezer]

This gets written about quite a lot.

I'll take a few lines and others will add. If you're accustomed to a console, the spinet world will be noticeably different.

The manual tapering is not the same. Spinets operate on a constant impedance (10 ohms?) where consoles have specific maps for specific ranges. All things being equal, they're simply just not equal, though, interestingly, each has its fans.

You'll notice also that the drawbar lineup isn't quite the same. The spinet has a TG with fewer notes. Not many, but several not there.

The pedal tones aren't sine wave wheels. They're notched and produce what several have described as "tuba" timbre. It might be an acquired taste.

Remember, always remember, Hammond did not make the Spinet line to appeal to the same customers as a console. Someone might think "an organ is an organ" these days, but in those, these subtleties really mattered. The spinet isn't for concert halls, theaters, and nightclubs, but for places like small chapels, homes, and mortuaries. It's a subdued sound and was meant to be from the factory. Obviously, great fun and satisfaction can be had in ramping up that sound.

Speaking of sound, you'll find over a dozen tones intentionally grounded to the chassis (thus silent). Look up "poor mans' foldback" on YouTube and HammondWiki.

While you're on HammondWiki, there's a lot to read that can help you see technical and internal differences. End block rings are invariably from someone placing a drink on them. You might try the old trick of a hot clothes iron and a cloth. The spotting is often from trapped moisture and boiling it off with an iron, and absorbing with a cloth, can often work wonders.

There's lots of other stuff.....

[enor]

You're saying that the volume output of the higher frequencies seems lower. This perception can be caused by a number of things, but I'm guessing it's one of these:

* You're using a registration with many drawbars out, including the highest ones. In this case you'll experience high frequencies dropping out because the spinet Hammonds do not have harmonic foldback. This can be perceived as a loss of volume.

- or -

* The sensation of volume drop in the higher ranges persists even with small registrations, and indeed even with just one drawbar out. In this case I'll say you're hearing the effect of drifted filter capacitors on the tone generator. The M-3 will have wax capacitors, and it's not uncommon for them to have drifted to twice their original value or more - which makes the overall volume "note-to-note" very uneven, and the higher frequencies become muffled in relation to the lowest ones (the lower frequencies do not have a capacitor in their filter, so they stay unaffected by aging)

[ALBATROS1234]

Thanks guys both replies are helpful. This is my first organ so I don't really know much about the subtle differences. I am a guitarist and singer. But played trumpet and baritone from 4th grade thru high school. I got the organ it wasn't working, fiddling around got it to play, I traced down a volume difference to a bad 6au6 and changed that.

The draw bars were likely all pulled out so perhaps that was the deal. I just liked the tone better like that. After I posted I watched some YouTube and one guy was explain draw bars and showed how they are set and changed in real time while playing. He explained that playing in certain areas of the keyboard require different settings .that could be my case.

I am a tube tech so I can change caps.i know how those paper was caps can many times fail. That said I didn't want to devalue the m3 or decrease tone quality. Are there any certain caps that work better in a Hammond or just use film caps? I know in guitar amps it can make a tonal difference using ceramic vs film or poly. Do Hammond guys just do full recaps on something thus only or should I only replace what's faulty and test each one? Sorry for the beginner questions.

[enor]

Hammond themselves went from wax paper to mylar caps in the 60s, and that's what most people do when recapping as well. There's no high voltages involved (the signals filtered are in the millivolts range). Recapping won't devalue the instrument - quite the opposite, it will restore the tone to what it once was when the organ was new. Originally the filter caps were selected carefully to match each coil, meaning that just replacing with new caps sometimes results in an organ that's still uneven and needs recalibration of the tone generator. However, even if it turns out slightly uneven it will still be heaps better than it is with degraded, twice-their-original-value caps.

[Alek Z]

This is nothing out of the ordinary. Spinets didn't have the tapering, constant 16 ohms across the manual on all drawbars. This naturally makes the higher tones less pronounced by perception, and circuitry. Also as mentioned the foldback makes a difference, but it only cuts out on the top 5 drawbars of the upper manual, and less on the lower manual. Also, the drawbars are wired differently, on the upper manual notice that there are 2 brown drawbars. These are sub harmonics, the sub fundamental and the sub 5th, this is the main difference but there is also the fact that percussion can only be used on the upper manual. All these things are things that are just part of the organ, though they can be modified, if you're in for many, many, hours of meticulous work, and a good understanding and knowledge of how to do such things. Enjoy the M3 though! They're still fantastic organs, just not quite on the level of the consoles. It's as close as you can get without it though.

[ALBATROS1234]

Ok guys I was just wanting to get the opinions of guys with experience so as to cut down on my trial and error. I am in no way a keyboard player , I did have a early 80s korg polyphonic that I used to play around with until hurricane Katrina took it ,8 guitars several tube and solid state amps, a p.a. sys. Etc. At the moment I am fascinated with this m3. Not sure if I will restore it and sell it, learn to play organ or strip it for parts and sell the rest. I had an interesting idea the other night about taking the vibrato scanner out and mounting it in a box and making it into a vibrato guitar effect but if so I need to mod it to adjust rate rather than 2 speeds. And I've seen guys mod an ao29 into a nice guitar amp.i guess time will tell. It seems a bit sacrilegious to take apart a working 1958 classic Hammond. When I bought it there was no sound but a hum in the speaker, it began working pretty well without much .perhaps the universe is telling me learn to play.

[Alek Z]

I've thought about that too with the vibrato scanner. The switch between the two speeds only contains a resistor so maybe you could achieve adjust rate by just putting a pot in there. Very cool idea, one way I've thought you might be able to get adjustable speed would be if you swapped Hammond's synchronous motor out with some other motor, since the synchronous motor only runs at 1200 rpm. This might have a more natural way of adjusting the rate because of how the vibrato circuit is configured. I would think it sacrilegious to part one of these out, but to each their own. Then again if you're confident with electronics, which you seem to be, you could do some killer mods to the organ to make it sound better.

[enor]

Vibrato speed on a scanner-equipped Hammond is always around 7 Hz, the only way to adjust the speed would be to change the rotational speed of the scanner shaft (which would also cause a pitch bend). I don't know what "2 speeds" Alek Z speaks of, there is no such switch on any Hammond?

[Alek Z]

Enor, I was referring to chorus and vibrato which is what the poster was presumably referring to when he said 2 speeds, switch just being the 12k or 22k resistor.

[enor]

I thought he might have meant "small" vs "normal": But that too is totally unrelated to speed.

[james]

I think they are cheap sounding organ, and you can tell where the tones drop out. Also where other brands of spinet organs had 13 pedals Hammond M models only had 12 so just one C you had to use any time a C tone was needed.

James

[enor]

That's not quite true. The M-100 series has 13 pedals.