On the subject of machinery and technology, musical or otherwise. I’m not a master of any of this and don’t intend it to be instructional and assume no responsibility for your use or misuse of these, but I present it as an exposition for those who may be interested.
rebuilding a leslie slow motor
An archived live video of a quick(ish) rebuild of a clacking slow motor from my Leslie 147. I did find the missing screw on the floor afterward.
Will it go ’round in circles? Talljack Leslie 31H rotor reconfiguration
After the amplifier rebuild/modifications, the trickiest part of the Leslie 31H project has been figuring out the most elegant way to reconfigure the rotors so that they’ll work with two-speed motor stacks. Here’s what I came up with.
LESLIE 31H AMP REBUILD COMPLETE, I GET SOUND OUT OF IT AT LAST
I rebuilt the Leslie 31H amplifier, but not without a couple of snags along the way. Thanks to the eminent wisdom of Trek II’s Michael Smokowicz, the final word on matters Hammond and Leslie, I got them sorted out and the cabinet is now producing its barrel-chested roar once again.
hammond bc chorus generator revival, or: To every Hammond BC, turn! Turn! Turn! There is a chorus generator, turn! Turn! Turn!
Further to the treatise on my descent into gooberdom, I brought home a supremely junked Hammond BC from a dusty field in Ojai for a song. It’s just about useless, but for its precious chorus generator that I will use in the restoration of another, chorus-generatorless BC. But will this donor generator even turn? I break out the widowmaker and give myself over to the whims of the goddess Fortune.
wiring the road organ for 122 and 147
After years of having only Leslie 147s and their equivalents, the Leslie 31H “Tallboy” will soon join the ranks once its rebuild is complete. In preparation, I’m outfitting my organs with 122 as well as 147 hookups.
how does a leslie work?
An often-posed question with a frequently-misunderstood answer.
the “prokon” tube eq/overdrive
I built a tube equalizer and overdrive circuit designed by Kon Zissis of Australia for my road organ.
for the love of god
Never, ever do this.
a preliminary look at the leslie 31h “tallboy”
I procured a Series 1 Leslie 31H from Northern California over Mother’s Day Weekend of 2019, and I’m restoring it to better-than-new condition. I’m making it a standard 122 configuration with solid-state switching, and converting it to two-speed operation, as well as the requisite amplifier rebuild and cabinet restoration. Here’s a look at it in the early stages.
little shop of hammond horrors
The prospect of servicing organs and Leslies is a daunting one to most, and as a result, maintenance is often deferred. I’ve seen some pretty egregious examples of this, like here in my friend Chris’s Leslie 147.
tonewheel generator testing
During the build of my C-2 road organ, while the tone generator was out I tested each of the individual tonewheels for signal and flutter.
Maxwell Butler 