Intro

hi folks,

many of my friends and family suggested to share my hammond restoration attempt. i think if you want to read this, you know already a lot about  hammonds and you are as crazy as me or even more... so i do not write about the hammonds in general. some links for the newbies: Hammond faq, home page of Captain Foldback, age determination list

Bottom line: I would not start it again :-)

So, I live in Hungary and I bought a Hammond A100 from England via ebay. I bought it last year, mid of october, 2011. 3 pictures, description said: a hammond organ which has been started to be chopped, but all parts are available.

lol.

reality: the organ has parts dating between X and Y, where X<1960 and Y>=1974. Basically, i am able to cover almost all production year of the big hammond consoles within one organ... so it is not a genuine organ, but a collection of different parts. all were there, except some important ones: starter motor, preset matrix, wiring loom to the keyboards, 70% of the tubes, expression pedal. good deal? not really

but it was not an option to send it back (transport GB-HU of such a heavy stuff is not that cheap, if you do it twice, you payed half of  the price of the organ...)

anyhow, some pictures to show the progress:

The organ in 12/2011, right after starting to disassemble

Hey, this is right during dissambling. I did not have to cut *any* wires... they were already cut...

notice the necklace reverb. it dates the reverb and possibly the woodwork to 1959/60.  the only part which is 234V/50Hz...

drawbars

almost all drawbars available, no wire... some plastic knobs are missing or broken... details later... the drawbar knobs are engraved, i.e., this part comes from 1969 or later.

Tone generator bottom view

at least the TG is there, with all tone wheels.... and runner motor. but no coupling springs and starter... capacitors are red mylar, and based on the printings, dating from 1974...


So, after removing the keyboards, i realized that the terminal strip of the keyboards are broken. this means that the internal tiny wires might have broken as well... in addition some wires coming out of the keyboard and going to the preset matrix were also cut right at the keyboards...

so, disassembly was necessary:

No problem... i had to check only 61x9 little resistance wire to figure out if there are some broken... (btw, per manual, so altogether  1098 wires...)

since the internal wires are insulated with textil, and the side cover of the keyboard is made of wood instead of plastic, the keyboard must come from a B3/C3 manufactured before 1960

after doing one keyboard, project slowed done somewhat... i got a start motor from ebay US, fixed one generator coil, so i have now all the 91 sounds, get a 230/110V transformer, a 50/60Hz converter...

Since mid of august,  there is more significant progress...

but this is the next story

good night

A100SemiChop