Hammond Organ Serial Numbers
I found this web page that lists all of the Hammond Organ and Leslie Speaker models. Even better, it contains details about each one. Wanting to know if that L-100 organ has percussion? Or, does the Leslie 21H have one or two speeds? All of that information is here:This entry was posted on Monday, September 17th, 2007 at 3:21 am and is filed under.
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Just for some background info, I'm a guitarist that likes to dabble in keyboards a bit, and I've always loved the sound of old Hammonds, but don't really know all that much about them.Today I found a Hammond Model H at an estate sale (looks like a H-100 from what I can find). It's in great shape and seemed to be working great when I tried it out. It's a big console with two manuals & pedals. No Leslie cab included, but I know where one is I could pick up if I feel the need. They're asking what I considered a very low amount for the organ.Does anyone know what these beasts are worth (average price and maybe what you would offer)? I know it's no B3, but is it all that different? Also, how hard are they to transport?Thanks for any input!
Hammond Organ Serial Number 481236 Manual
You guys may have to dumb it down into guitar player-understandable termsB3 - tonewheel generator, scanner vibrato (classic 'purr'), percussive 'wooden' thunk, vacuum tube audio path (you guitarists understand the 'warm' sound of tubes, no?), waterfall keys (rugged).H100 - tonewheel generator, phase shift vibrato (too churchy), percussive 'plastic' beep, solid state audio path (sterile and cold), diving board keys (prone to breaking).They only thing they share is the tonewheel generator. All the other components are radically different.Like I said - the furthest you can get from a B-3. All musicians have their own experiences with various insturments, and 'purists' will always lay out the worse aspects of any insturment (been there and done that myself on occason). I truly believe in the philosophy of 'lesser and greater in all things.'
The H-100 you speak of, if it is fully functional, will add to your keyboard experiences. If you can negotiate the $250 down, all the better.
I have found junkers in every insturment venue I've ever played in, and can make the same sort of statements as found from other writers here. But.there's a pony under every pile of dung, so don't be too hasty to walk away from the deal you've found. BTW, I've been a professional musician for +53 years, teach classic and electric guitar, acoustic and digital piano, and own/play a pristine 1959 Hammond C-3 with original JR20 speaker + a Leslie 3300 tied into the system with Trek reverb added. I was able to find a gentleman who had worked for the original Hammond Factory and for $100 each obtained copies of the owners manual and service manual. I can now do all of my own work on the Hammond. And yes, you can tie any number of Leslies into the H-100 including a reverb system (if it doesn't have one). Depending on the Leslie model you purchase, you may need a pre-amp, but you can run that one to ground after you have the organ.
If it's fully functional, buy it. Learn to live with its ups and downs while you add to your keyboard experience. I know this is a really old thread, but it came up when I Googled for information about the Hammond H-100. Since a Hammond B-3 or the like is in the neighborhood of $3000 these days, it would seem that a Hammond H-100, as it is a real tonewheel organ, would be a bargain even if you had to pay $100 for it, and maybe even $250.
Hammond Elegante
Of course, there is an excellent computer simulation of a good Hammond tonewheel organ (it even has a testimonial from Lonnie Smith, and they don't get any better than that) now available for an introductory price of $200, and you can also get MIDI keyboards cheaply.(Of course, I was referring to IK Multimedia's B-3X, which has been discussed elsewhere in these forums.)Early production models of the H-100 had a real vibrato; someone technically and electronically inclined might be able to replace the phase-shift vibrato of most H-100s. That it uses transistor amplification instead of tube amplication is something I'd tend to see as a plus - longer life, longer reliability, with minimal, if any, effect on the sound quality.With only a limited number of Hammond tonewheel organs in existence, I would think that even the humble H-100 should be conserved, not hauled away to the scrapyard.And, it may also be noted, that at least one noted recording artist used it on his albums: Klaus Wunderlich. All right, his music is in a different genre than that of Jimmy Smith, but I'd say that's still evidence that an H-100 is a musical instrument, not a piece of junk.Edited October 19 by quadibloc.