My experience with new capacitors in a 1959 B3

[Rudecamp]

I know this is an oft-discussed topic, but since it gets so much interest and generates some controversy, I thought I would share my experience. I had to remove my B3 tone generator to make some other repairs and while I had it on the bench, I decided to replace the brown wax sealed capacitors. My decision was sealed when I started to test the old capacitors and found most of them over spec, -- some way over. The picture below shows a .105 MF capacitor testing at .557 MF and that was typical. I ordered all of the new capacitors in a kit from BB Organ. I think most kits on offer from the various vendors are the same. With the TG on the bench, the process of replacement was surprisingly manageable. I did manage to break one of the tiny wires from the transformers but it was an easy fix. You do have to watch those wires, though! I tested the outputs from each tonewheel before and after cap replacement and I have pasted the charts below. I only have the volts RMS measurements because I did not have access to the equipment needed to test peak to peak. I considered rebalancing the organ, but decided against since I felt a bit over my head and didn't really have any specific complaints about the sound other than it being tired.
My conclusion - the organ (run through a Leslie 122) is MUCH louder and brighter. I thought all the tones were working before, but now I understand that many were very weak sounding. It is a bit harsh with certain drawbar settings, but the beauty is that every drawbar move seems to make a difference now. If I am "pulling out all the stops", I just push the top drawbars in a bit and it takes away the perception of harshness. People who have heard the organ before and after are blown away. It just sounds powerful now, dominant. It was not terrible before, but, I realize now that it sounded anemic and old. Now it sounds vigorous.
I am not sure I would have tackled this had the TG not already been on the bench, but I'm really glad I did. Given the shape of the caps in the TG, I will eventually replace all of the wax caps on the organ and expect more good results.

[tiredoldgeezer]

Well... yeah.... a history of controversy... though I'm not entirely certain exactly why.
There are reports that "It ruined my organ!"
At first blush, it makes no logical sense that it would, yet detractors were loud and insistent.

I suppose that during assembly, the organs were all soldered up and THEN taken to the calibration bench for tapering. It's quite possible that a new cap job should be followed up with another calibration. There's enough tolerance in the components that it could certainly affect things.

Still, even without re-calibration, others were quite pleased with the new vigor and vim now under the pedal.
It's the one mod/fix/resto I've not done yet, though I have a couple of possible candidates.

I'm really glad yours came out well and it's been pleasant.

[handyczech]

I have owned several tonewheel consoles over the past 50 years, and I only lately worked up the courage to change the caps in an organ I picked up several years ago, a nice BV sleeping in a Baptist church in Pontiac Illinois, unused since the start motor had the usual problem. The poor thing sounded muffled and quiet, and the recap brought it back up to where it should be , even without a scientific rebalancing of the whole generator. Don't forget there is a tone control if you wish to back off some of the brilliance. I later bought and rehabbed a 22H which had a replacement Hammond-Suzuki driver, which made the organ a bit shrill. The cotton wad in the horn was missing, and replacing it with a big one from a prescription bottle dampened the shrillness beautifully. I love low tech.

[tmccann]

Nice job. A re-cap on the bench is easy and hard to screw up for sure. Re-calibrating is another matter...I managed to have a pole piece go dead in the process once. Pretty much kills the tone generator when that happens...

Your "after" data looks really close to the Kon Zissis theoretical data, so it seems like it ought to sound pretty good as is, and a re-calibration seems not worth the risk. If I had one this close I might consider tweaking a few of the cap values before anything else.

I think the harshness is a relative thing, and it's almost impossible to say that it didn't sound "harsh" from the factory. Given some time to adjust it might sound just perfect with full draw bars.

Did you notice any improvement in "rumble" or ghost notes?

[Rudecamp]

The organ was pretty quiet before although I think the AO 28 would benefit from a service. I haven't noticed any difference in background noise since the recap.

[David Anderson]

Well... yeah.... a history of controversy... though I'm not entirely certain exactly why.
There are reports that "It ruined my organ!"
At first blush, it makes no logical sense that it would, yet detractors were loud and insistent.

There are people who really like the mellower tone of the organs with aged capacitors, and for those people recapping does "ruin" them, even though we can be sure that that's not what the organ sounded like when it left the Hammond factory.

To my mind, it's a case of if it doesn't seem broke to you, don't fix it. But there are always people obsessed with tweaking their tone, and it's those types who tended to recap and then have remorse afterwards.

Whether or not it's needed depends very much on the individual organ and likely the environmental conditions it's been in over its life. I have a '59 C3 that, to my ear, doesn't need it, but I know of two 2-series organs locally that need recapping badly.

It's also the case the the aging process is ongoing, so what may have still been acceptable 20 years ago has gotten past that point.

I recapped my first Hammond 30 years ago (time flies) because the wax caps were in terrible shape. It had originally been a CV, and I learned its story years after I bought it. It had been in a church that burned down around it, and someone saved the guts and turned it into a chop. The caps were melted -- from the heat. Recapping returned it to usable playing condition.

[Jyvoipabo]

Hello,

I found on the vibrato delay line a 5n6 cap measured 36nF.

It was + 543% nominal value.
It is certainly not a record, because by dint of increasing, the cap ends up in a short circuit.
Then it becomes a medic emergency.

JP

[kziss]

I remember the old days on the Hammond internet forums where some people were quite aggressively and sometimes even belligerently opposed to the idea of recapping the wax capped TG's and they would ridiculously accuse those who encouraged TG recapping of destroying the organs.

Thankfully this totally irrational and unwarranted belligerence has now subsided and these days TG recapping is correctly encouraged as being an essential part of helping to closely restore the original spec organ sound if the brighter original spec sound is desired.

Likewise those who prefer the mellower sound of the wax capped TG's are equally encouraged to keep the wax paper capacitors in place because this mellower sound is more musically pleasant to them than the brighter factory spec sound.

As for myself, I like both the "new organ" sound as well as the mellower "aged wax caps" sound so therefore I have modified my recapped 1962 C3 and my 1965 red mylar capped C3 organs by wiring up 3-position switches for the TG notes 49 to 91 which allow me to choose either the proper spec capacitor values for the "new organ" sound, and two degrees of aged wax capacitor simulations by switching in capacitors in parallel with the proper spec capacitors thus raising up the total nF values to be either similar to the typical nf values of the late 1950's and early 1960's era wax paper capacitors which I have measured after removing them from the TG's, or the typical nf values of the much more off spec wax paper capacitors from the 1940's and the 1950's era.

I have mounted the capacitor switches for the TG notes 49 to 91 on a strip mounted under the lower manual for easy access thus easily allowing me to simulate the organ sounds of different "vintages".

A musically pleasing thing that I noticed is that when I set the TG capacitor switches to create the aged wax paper capacitors tonality and I then turn on the treble boosts that I have wired into the AO28 preamp, this creates a very spitty key click and "air" in the sound and it also brings up the levels of the upper midrange and the treble TG notes to be similar to what they are on a recapped pre 1964 organ or a post 1964 red mylar capped organ.

This gives my C3 organs an interesting "raw" sounding character with growl and spit both on the main organ sound and the percussion signal, and this sounds very good both for Rock music as well as Jazz/Blues.

Some old Jazz/Blues recordings do have a much more noticeable key click spit than that of a stock organ so I wonder if these organs had the treble cut capacitors removed from the AO28.

Turning on the AO28 treble boosts whilst the TG capacitor switches are set to produce the correct spec capacitor values for the "new organ" sound results in an excessively bright and shrill sound, but switching the TG capacitor switches to create the "aged wax caps" settings brings the organ tonality back into proper balance along with the enhanced spit and growl created by the treble boost.
As well as that, the "aged wax caps" settings allows undertones to be audible underneath the TG notes which adds to the "character" and the growl of the sound as opposed to the cleaner sine wave sound of the TG notes produced when the switches are set to produce the correct spec capacitors values.

Those who have wax capped -3 series organs and who want to recap the TG but they are worried about doing such a delicate and time consuming job, could first try out the AO28 treble boost by disconnecting (removing) the following three treble cut capacitors:

The C2 39 pf feedback capacitor from the V1 6AU6 valve of the Non Vibrato channel.
The C7 24 pf feedback capacitor of the V2 6AU6 valve of the Vibrato channel.
The C33 3.3 nf ( .0033 uf) grounding capacitor of the Percussion output high pass filter.

With the schematics as a guide, the equivalent position treble cut capacitors can be disconnected from the AO29 amplifier of the M3 and the M100 series spinet organs, and also the equivalent position treble cut capacitors of the Non Vibrato channel and the Vibrato channel of the AO10 preamp of the B2, C2 and RT2 organs and also the amplifier in the M2 spinet organs.

Those who have recapped or red mylar capped organs and they do not like the brighter sound can make their organs sound like typical wax capped organs from the late 1950's/early 1960's era by wiring up 120 nf capacitors in parallel with the 255 nf capacitors of the TG notes 49 to 54 thus making up the total nf value to be 375 nf, and by wiring up 56 nf capacitors in parallel with the 100 nf capacitors of the TG notes 55 to 91 thus making up the total nf value of 156 nf.

I have also hard wired the TG notes 49 to 91 of my heavily modified 1969 H-111 organ with these same capacitor values so that it sounds more like a wax capped pre 1937 Model A or BC organ built before the manual tapering scheme was introduced sometime in 1937.

All the best.
Kon.

[Tonewheel]

Genius. Love this.

[David Anderson]

Thankfully this totally irrational and unwarranted belligerence has now subsided and these days TG recapping is correctly encouraged as being an essential part of helping to closely restore the original spec organ sound if the brighter original spec sound is desired.

I think both of us contributed in our own ways to this shift in opinion via analysis of the circuit and the TG curve project.

The fact that, early on, I had a TG with clearly ruined capacitors that I replaced definitely influenced how I viewed the process.

[theseacowexists]

Is the 200VDC rating really necessary for the TG caps? I had been wondering about this lately.

[muckelroy]

Is the 200VDC rating really necessary for the TG caps? I had been wondering about this lately.

technically no, but they are a convenient size physically. They shouldn't "see" any DC.

[kziss]

I think both of us contributed in our own ways to this shift in opinion via analysis of the circuit and the TG curve project.
The fact that, early on, I had a TG with clearly ruined capacitors that I replaced definitely influenced how I viewed the process.

Hi David.
Yes all the irrefutable facts and the technical information and explanations and your measurements of the TG capacitors and the corresponding transformer filter coils that you presented to the forums would have significantly helped to utterly demolish the totally erroneous misinformation being aggressively peddled by some of the anti-recapping people.

I remember one staunch anti-recapper replying back trying to dismiss one of my posts about TG recapping with his words "we are talking about a musical instrument" thus implying that recapping the TG will somehow damage or detract from the "musical" qualities of the organ.

I remember one anti-recapper writing "I would never do this to any of my organs", and I remember replying back that the claims by the anti-recappers that recapping the TG will ruin the organ sound is like claiming that replacing old worn out and rusty guitar strings that have lost their tone and ability to properly intonate with new strings will somehow ruin the sound of a guitar.

Thankfully the forums are much more relaxed places to discuss TG recapping and TG recalibration these days where logical, factual technical information has in most cases trumped over emotional based objections or misinformation.

My own interest in finding out about TG recalibration began after I read the 1990 Keyboard Magazine Hammond organ feature where Bill Beer mentioned that he measured the TG output levels of "six hot bitchin B3's", and that he then used these output curves as the basis to create his "real fat and ballsy" sounding TG output curves.

Soon after I bought my wax capped 1962 C3 back in 2002, I then recapped the TG and I then began experimenting with recalibrating the TG by ear, but I did not have any information about what a normal TG output curve looked like so that I can use it as a reference point.

I then found out about the Hammond internet forums and I joined Hamtech and the Hammond Zeni and the Yahoo Groups Hammond Zone forums, and I then asked if anyone has any measured TG output curves that they are willing to send me. A few people including you responded by sending me their measured TG output curves, and this was the birth of the TG data spreadsheet which has since grown to feature well over a hundred measured TG output curves including the TG output curves of organs from all decades of the 40 year production span (1935 to 1975), and other TG related information thus making it a freely available authoritative "go to" reference source.

All the best.
Kon.