How to run/hook up tone cab AND leslie.......

[ForPlay1976]

GREETINGS ALL!!!

1st post on this outstanding forum. I am a 40 yrs experienced guitar player but always wanted a hammond tone wheel set up. I play keys just well enough for people to buy me beers to stop playing:-( . Last week, I finally pulled the trigger after finding an almost mint 1961 M3 with 25 orpheum leslie. Bought the set from 1st owners family for $100.00:-) .

The m3 already was wired to plug in the leslie and works great. Then I found a hammond pr-20 tone cab the girl wants out of her house for $20.00 and its also a 1961 (meant to be huh!!) and dead mint. So, I have been reading that a tone cab with a leslie is great. For 20 smackers, I must try it. So, question is......, how do i hook that up so my m3 plays both?

Again, love the forum and appreciate all help and advice for this organ noob.

[enor]

GREETINGS ALL!!!

1st post on this outstanding forum. I am a 40 yrs experienced guitar player but always wanted a hammond tone wheel set up. I play keys just well enough for people to buy me beers to stop playing:-( . Last week, I finally pulled the trigger after finding an almost mint 1961 M3 with 25 orpheum leslie. Bought the set from 1st owners family for $100.00:-) .

The m3 already was wired to plug in the leslie and works great. Then I found a hammond pr-20 tone cab the girl wants out of her house for $20.00 and its also a 1961 (meant to be huh!!) and dead mint. So, I have been reading that a tone cab with a leslie is great. For 20 smackers, I must try it. So, question is......, how do i hook that up so my m3 plays both?

Again, love the forum and appreciate all help and advice for this organ noob.

Hooking up a Hammond tone cabinet to an M-series organ isn't trivial unfortunately, as the tone cabinet takes a balanced input signal. The easiest way would be if you found a Leslie 122 connector kit, and hooked it up partially (all the signal cabling gets connected, but leave all speed switching wiring unconnected - no half moon switches, and no high voltage feed to the kit).

[ForPlay1976]

Well, that's not good news. Sounds like if I hook up the tone cab then i cant control the leslie at all, just stays on all the time weather I want it on or not. Correct?

[Jaim]

No - There are 3 defined 6 pin cable configurations. Your Leslie 25 uses a 6W type. The tone cabinet uses a 6H type. What enor suggested is using a Leslie 122 kit (6H) and not connect the speed switching circuit as it is not needed. Check out http://www.captain-foldback.com/ and click on the leslie pinout tab.

The M3 doesn't have a balanced output so you will have to obtain a kit that creates one.

Edit: The 8010 can be used as a starting point. Go to http://www.fishorgans.com/leslie_kit...or_Hammond.pdf

If you don't want to be able to switch between cabinets you can use the 6122XFMR available from http://www.tonewheelgeneral.com/buil...t=Transformers and a 6 pin female connection to build your own.



Jim

[muckelroy]

I've done a similar thing with my M111. I bought the equivalent of a 7271 kit ( http://www.fishorgans.com/leslie_kit...or_Hammond.pdf ). But, you also need a 6122XFMR and a second 6-pin socket.

This gives the ability to have M-E-E switching. In Main, the main organ speaker as well as tone cabinet will sound. In Ensemble, the Leslie has signal also (so all 3 sound.) In echo, it's only the Leslie.

The way I wired it was to take the 6122XFMR, and connect the red/black wires to the main organ speaker signal (Voice coil wires, Green/black). The red, yellow, and striped center tap feed a 6 pin connector that goes to the tone cabinet (pin 1, 6, and 2 respectively). Most Hammond tone cabinets require a lot of gain to drive adequately. This setup can drive the tone cabinet without difficulty or distortion.

It's far from the only way to do it, but it's how I did it, and it works nicely.

I also did it this way so that the organ's power amp always has a load on it. While in main, the speakers are still attached to it giving their load. While in echo, the Leslie speaker load switch is set to 8 ohms, so that is the load. While in ensemble, I guess it's a 4 ohm load (speakers + Leslie load switch in parallel) but it's still adequate to operate the amp and keep a load on it. What's really dangerous is when there is NO load on the main amplifier. Whatever you do, try to avoid that scenario.

If you end up not wanting the M3 internal speaker to ever sound, then you should hang a 8 ohm 10 watt resistor across the voice coil wires.

Also a word of caution, I'm a little uncertain of this, but I think that if your Leslie 25 has the Type 25 booster amplifier, then there may not be a "load" switch or a dummy load resistor across the signal path. (Like I said, I could be wrong.) It's only the passive Leslie 25 types that don't have a booster amp which are, inherently, able to give a load by virtue of being directly attached to the Leslie 25 woofer.

NOTE: don't use the 122XB-INPUT transformer. It is smaller and cheaper but it picks up nearby power transformer hum like mad, no matter where I tried to position it. 6122XFMR picks up almost no hum no matter where you install it.