Conn 644 / Leslie 122a

[PLJr]

Hi all, I have a 1960 or so B3 running through a Leslie 122A. I have just acquired a Conn 644 Martinique in pretty good shape. Will it be possible to rig it up to play through the Leslie as well? I would, of course only operate one organ at a time. If that is a huge headache, what would be a good external speaker setup for the Conn? I am looking for a full rich, loud sound quality like my Hammond has. Thanks in advance.

[BKK35MGC]

Most Conns have a built-in Leslie. On mine (I have a different model Conn than you), "Flute Celeste" is slow Leslie and "Flute Tremolo" is fast Leslie. Fast Leslie turns the organ from a frankly poor sounding church organ to a decent sounding theater organ.

Conns also run through multiple "channels" for various tones, each having separate amps and speakers. This means only 1/4 to 1/3 of the available sounds are played through the Leslie. The rest are played through other speakers. If you wanted to bypass the built-in Leslie in favor of the external Leslie, you probably could without too much difficulty but it would still only play about 1/3 of the organ's sounds through the Leslie. Perhaps you wanted to run a different channel through the Leslie and get some custom sounds? That might be fun to experiment with.

Conn also made speakers with pipes on top that are supposed to resemble organ pipes. These pop up on the internet as available from time to time but people ask (IMO anyway) too high a price for them. I don't know how useful they are without the special box Conn made to hook them up to the organ (which my organ does not have).

[PLJr]

BKK35MGC Thanks for the advice. I have never had one of these before and I am looking forward to getting into it. I'm sure I will have some more questions once I get going.

[andyg]

The 644 is three channel. Flute/Tibia, Reed/String and Percussion. Ideally, you put all three channels through a Leslie. Adding a Leslie to the Tibias only means that the everything else would still speak through the organ. It's possible, I did it with one of my organs which was also three channel. I did use a Leslie connector kit that let me use the organ's leslie unit, the external Leslie or both. I normally used just the external Leslie and it had to be running well below its full volume so it didn't drown out the organ!

The 122A is not a good match for the Conn 644. 1) It needs a balanced input and there is no balanced output available on the 644, at least not without modification. 2) The Conn is designed to produce a theatre organ sound. The flutes need just a single rotor to produce a tremolo that's close to a theatre organ tremulant. The horn rotor in a Leslie like the 122A adds a 'jiggle' to the upper Tibias but it's not an authentic theatre organ tremolo. Some people do like that sound, and I've used it myself. Others prefer a more accurate tremolo.

What would I add to a 644? IIRC, the organ has an 11-pin Leslie socket, so I'd look for a 705 plus a 540 'top box' for the third channel. If you want that horn 'jiggle', then the 720 plus the 540. If you could ever find one, Leslie built the 255 just for the Conn, and you'd add some Conn Pipe Speakers for the non-Tibia voices. And the rarest of the rare would be the Leslie 600. To be honest, the 644 makes a pretty big sound all on its own - I had one for a while before moving up to its bigger brother, the 652. In a home situation it didn't really need anything else.

[PLJr]

Thanks, AndyG. I really appreciate it. I got it for nothing. Once I got it home and opened the top areas up it was, of course full of dust.some keys weren't working... I got most of the dust out and tinkered around a bit and pretty much all the keys are working now. The lower keyboard is still a bit off but the upper one plays great. I got used to my B3/Leslie combo which really packs a punch. I'm glad to have read what you guys wrote. Once it started sounding more "whole" and I got the leslie fired up I really liked the sound. Hopefully there wont be any major surprises as I go through it. /Best