Angelo J Rossi blog

Well here they are, side by side with a nice little sleeping bag as sewn by John Cott of Pro Audio Rental, thank you John!  There have been some moments of frustration in the final tuning of this pair, but in that process, something is learned and information is gleaned.   Information I can share with you if you are interested in the slightest.I want to send a shout out first to the folks (folk) at Vintage Hammond.com, http://vintagehammond.com/ without who’s treasure trove of after market and vintage parts we could not have refurbished and outfitted our project.  Thank you Jerrell Kautz and staff for your devotion and service.  When I first fired up the Hammond at the studio, there was a strange sound, a sound that Kevin attributed to just plain analog Hammond noise.  However, the sound only existed in slow speed operation of the Leslie.  When I spun the horns and the fast speed motor kicked in the, “noise” disappeared. Upon further inspection we deemed it to be the high speed motor, which we then replaced.  As it turns out the second replacement motor was much quieter, so the process of elimination went better than expected. Since both motors were new, it was just a matter of luck that motor number two did not make that sound which was quite annoying.  I digress.   Now, once you replace a motor in these devices, there is an adjustment process by witch you angle the motors to spin the fly wheel upon operation.  This step is quite tricky.  Needless to say, one needs a needle-nose pliers, small hands and a strong grip to adjust the three nuts that angle the shaft to activate and deactivate the motor upon operation.  Once adjusted, the spinning action, slow/fast is now operational.  

Today was the final day for resurrecting the “shine” and the fury of this Hammond B-3.   With the addition of the percussion unit, the BCV is now an official B-3.  Kevin Korecky applied both talent and skill as well as creativity and engineering prowess into this rejuvenation and restoration project.  The result, sounds fantastic and looks 200% better. He breathed new life into this proud and unique instrument and deserves all of the credit for masterfully adapting and modifying this wood, making it worthy of any stage in the world.  The pictures show you the clean and shiny keys, the recently stained and polished wood, the engineering adaptation to the Leslie in support of higher quality JBL drivers and the augmentation of percussion and a larger (huge & blue) capacitor in support of the power supply modification to reduce hum.    Kevin also refurbished the pre-amp, and rebuilt the starting motor which was grinding a tad too much and replaced the older start and on/off switches.  Thanks to Kevin Korecky of Pro Audio Rentals in Palo Alto, CA without whom I would have never undertaken (financed) this venture.  Kevin, you are simply the best ;-> 

Ahh, today was a great day.  We installed the Hampton Voltage Power Supply (This power supply was found insufficient without capacitor augmentation, to drive the instrument – refer to Post 2/24 “Fini” for more detail.) and brought up the BCV without it’s slave partner, the tone cabinet, and then fired up the modified, “Frankenstein” Leslie and voala!  It’s alive!  Not only is that beast alive, it screams, it growls and no matter what they tell you down at the music store, there is no sound like a Hammond with a souped up Leslie.  There is such a growl with this Macintosh Amp (50 watts) and JBL drivers in place that it was almost too loud with the volume up half way.  The organ sounds as analog and sweet as you can get and through the Leslie that classic vibrato and swirl came alive instantly.  According to Kevin there are two issues to resolve;  1) there is a low 60 cycle hum, that we believe is caps in the pre-amp.  So a simple maintenance sweep through the pre-amp should resolve this annoyance.  2) The “throw” or displacement of the JBL 15″ bottom end speaker actually bumps up against the cut out for the speaker causing a scraping sound. So we are simply installing a gasket to solve this minor issue.  Talk about a screaming organ, this baby is growling like a lion, purrs like a kitten and sounds as sweet as a month old kitten, purring away.  This is again, one of the oldest living legends on the planet.  It would have been lost and left for dead, just like our freedoms and our democratic way of life, if not for the love of two individuals who embarked on a mission to resurrect this piece of Americana.  Imagine what hundreds of people can do if they decide to embark upon removing the current administrations agendas from our daily lives and strike a blow for a kinder and more gentler America.  Yes, we have been led astray, and we have most certainly been screwed by one of the most corrupt and idiotic administrations to have ever been elected to the presidency of the United States of America.  In fact, we are still being screwed it this “tape erasing” insult to our intelligence and the Justice Departments complicity is not enough to sicken your stomach, then you have a bolder constitution than I.  Yet, even though we have endured seven years of complete and total dereliction of duty and purposeful neglect, with a dream, a plan, some elbow grease and a vision, we can certainly overcome this set back and resurrect our democratic processes and let the the lovely swirling sound of freedom ring from our collective hearts.  I mean how difficult can it be to simply accept our misgivings, continue to defy the administrations lies and deception and move forward with purpose, together?  The answer is; as simple as rebuilding this classic instrument!

Well, I wanted to continue the patriotic theme and make these posts technically interesting as well. Kevin and I want to chronicle this restoration project and to share with you our journey in bringing this instrument back to life and to also upgrade the “package” so that it will be a road worthy and funky sounding instrument.  These old Hammond’s take a lot of care and feeding.  We found this Leslie, model 147 in a warehouse with a family of rats living inside.  The Hammond BCV was lovingly owned by it’s original owner and family and passed on to me when it came time to move.  It had been neglected, physically, but it is in working order, and sounds great with the Tone Cabinet that came with it.   Suffice it to say, we are cleaning these beauties up, restoring them back to their true splendor and glory by upgrading, cleaning, refinishing, and updating wherever we can with all American parts, kind of.  This will be a lengthy process and thus the post to the blog.  We are going to bring back this piece of Americana and restore her dignity and her grace, much the same as what we should do to our nations tarnished and battered image in the world today.  As our project goes, we are hoping we will find worthy and relevant topics of conversation to share on this post.     This Hammond Organ is a Model BC, Circa 1943 – 1947 which would have sold for about $1370.00 US in that time period.  You could have bought a home or a couple of cars for that kind of money back then as well.  The actual age is yet to be determined, but, we are working on it.  We are also adding a power supply and percussion module to make it more current and to get it closer to it’s predecessor, the B3 model.  For all of you antiquity buffs out there, yes it is not in it’s original condition.  We are intentionally beefing this system up and changing it’s illustrious character to accomplish a goal.  ((Point of note, it had already been upgraded by it’s original owner from a model BC to a model BCV))  Plus, we plan on using this instrument for recording and ‘live’ music performance so it has to be up to snuff, road worthy and ready to rock!