History of the Laurens Hammond and Don Leslie

The Invention of the Hammond Organ

The Hammond was invented by a French watchmaker named Laurence Hammond. He had all sorts of inventions and projects on the go, and eventually came up with the idea of creating a mechanical tone wheel generator. This generator could produce tones via small cogs with spacers in them. As they spin through an electric current, they create a tone along the generator.

The Birth of a Synthesizer

He essentially created the first synthesizer back then. In the 30s, Hammond intended for these organs to be standalone instruments. However, another innovator named Don Leslie loved the organ sound but wanted more movement and interesting possibilities.

The Leslie Speaker

Don Leslie devised a speaker with a rotating horn and a rotating bass speaker that could be used to play the organ through. Over the years, Laurence Hammond and Don Leslie had many disputes because Hammond didn't want Leslie to use his speakers with the Hammond organs.

• Hammond kept changing the inputs and outputs to prevent Leslie from using them.
• In turn, Leslie would modify his input to find compatibility.

Eventually, they became friends, but it took a significant amount of time.

My Hammond Organ

I found my Hammond on eBay, which is pretty standard, isn't it? It's a '63, possibly '62 C3, with red caps inside it rather than white caps. The white caps are an older type of capacitor with slightly different components.

Characteristics of My Organ

• It's a workhorse organ; it's not really a pretty studio piece.
• It's been chopped in half for portability. You might be able to see a line down here, allowing the top half to be lifted off.
• This design makes it vaguely portable rather than weighing an absolute ton.

My Hammond has been in and out of more vans than you'd care to remember, so it really does the job. There are other organs that sound far smoother, more silky, and newer, but this isn't one of them. This is a true touring workhorse organ.