Conn 652 Leslie Connection

[luciusmaximus]

Hello Forum,

I'm in the process of rehabilitating a Conn 652 that had been sitting in the back of an organ dealer for a number of years before a friend of mine rescued it, fixed a few issues, and rebuilt the internal leslie before I purchased it from him to finish the project... One of my eventual goals (after it's all playing..) is to add some external audio to liven the sound up a bit. I noticed on the Organ Service Corporation Leslie Connection Guide that there isn't a connector kit for this organ, and that there are only a few hard to find models of Leslie that work with the 3 channel 11 pin connector. I'd like to know if an 11 pin adapter exists that would allow me to connect a 6 or 9 pin home-sized Leslie to the Tibia channel and just have speaker outputs for the Main and Solo/Percussion Channels. Alternatively, if there was a way to do that with the Conn tone cabinet Jones Plug connector which is also on the back of the organ.

Thanks!

[andyg]

Whereabouts are you? You should be able to locate some of the correct 'plug and play' leslies, unless you're 'out in the sticks', as we say over here.

You need three channels, so you're after something from this list:

720 + 540 'top box'
715 + 515 'top box'
415 + 515
723
740
600 (now that IS a rare one!) Has provision for adding Conn pipes.

All of these, except the 600, will take up the same floor space as something like a 145 or 770 'home sized leslie'.

Or, with enough space, 2 x 720, 2 x 715 or 2 x 415 will make an even better sound.

Putting a leslie on the tibia channel is easy enough, just use the correct 'standard' single channel hook up kit. (Something like the 7279 for a 6 pin 145) If you just add the leslie without any internal/external switching, you'll find that the leslie will overpower the straight channels, so the standard kits will allow for this. Using the Jones plug? You could take the audio signal from there (or from the 11 pin socket for that matter). The 6 and 9 pin leslies require AC on their input, rather than the separate AC plug that the 11 pin models do, so that would have to be sorted out. In the EU by this date, you couldn't put AC on that sort of plug, not sure what the US regs were at that time. So there may be no AC on the Jones plug - someone will know for sure.

[tobeycat2007]

As mentioned location does make a difference here in the UK most of the above are quite hard to find, 723/740 dont think exist, 415 are very rare, I have a 515 topbox but its only one ever seen, even the 715/720 are now hard to find in decent working condition.

On a more positive note most of the above will make a massive difference to the organ and "liven the sound up" quite a lot, even the smaller 415 models are very good leslies, if you can find one working.

[luciusmaximus]

I'm located nearish to Philadelphia (about 40 minutes to center city/the Wanamaker organ) so there's a few stores that specialize in hammonds in the area. Unfortunately the local classifieds/ebay tend to only have the cases of the home sized leslies, and the 122/145 models sell for upwards of $1000. Thankfully the other models come up for sale from time to time, although many are just empty cases, where either the amps are taken for guitars, or all the guts are put into a 112/145 replica cabinet..

To answer Andy's question about the Jones plug- there doesn't appear to be any AC voltage going through it according to the service manual, but there seems to be some low voltage for switching the Leslie speed in the Conn 255 cabinet (And I just missed buying one off of eBay by a few hours!)

Another question about the connector kits- Would it be possible to get a 9 or 6 pin model and replace the female connector with the appropriate one for whichever leslie I can find? There's a few different kits on eBay for about $20USD with shipping at the moment, some even have all the main/ensemble and speed switches with them.