Background

What makes someone an organ player? I consider the Hammond organ my main instrument. Although I play piano and synthesizers also, there something about the approach that I makes some people organists and others pianists. Chords sounds different on organ vs piano for example. The organ is to thick sounding, I normally play 3 note chords, or maximum 4. On the piano I will put down from 4 to 8-10 notes in a chord. This is just one thing about the organ.

I have two organs, one 1959 B3 organ with a 122 leslie speaker, and a 1951 B2 organ with a 21H speaker. The B2’s can be a bargain, much cheaper than B3. And they sound really good, especially for jazz, as they can be quite smooth sounding, with less bite than a newer B3. You could also change some old parts if you’d like to get it to be more biting. I have installed the trek2 percussion kit, and I do think that percussions sounds really good, even thought I don’t use the 5th option, and I would prefer to have swithces instead of sliders, as the sliders take more time to adjust from off to on.

The leslie 122 is my favorite, I prefer it’s sounds to the 147. The 21H (and 22H and others) are essentially the same amp as a 122 but with less power. My 21H was lacking in power, and I changed the tank cap and then exchanged the two rectifier 5u4 tubes with solid state rectifiers. And what a difference! Much more power, and the bass was much more tighter. I was adviced against doing this, as the voltage on the tubes and the caps will be higher when using SS rectifiers compared to tube rectifiers. So you should at least replace the tank cap before doing this.

Well, this was just supposed to be the introduction. Read more post on organ here.