Turning On a Hammond C3 Organ

So this is how to turn on a Hammond organ, C3. It's quite a unique process and involves very old technology.

Starting the Organ

1. Starter Motor:

   • First, the starter motor has to go on.
   • Hear that speeding up?
   • Hold that for around 10 seconds or so.
   • The tone generator needs a bit of a kick to get going.
   • That's what the starter motor does.

2. Flipping to Run:

   • When we flip to Run, the whole thing comes to life.
   • You can see the Leslie spinning because the organ is sending power down that cable into the speaker.
   • Now we can let go.

   Turning the organ on achieved!

Organ Keyboards and Manuals

Now, let's come around to the other side.

• On an organ, there are two keyboards.
• If you're a piano player, you'd be familiar with just one.
• With the organ, we call these manuals:
  • Top manual
  • Bottom manual

Preset Settings

• The presets here look like keys, but they're not.
  • They simply select sounds that are pre-programmed in drawbar settings with a different sound on each one.
  • These presets are rarely used by most organ players.

Always use:

• BB
• B

These select the drawbars. Although these presets look like keys, they have nothing to do with keys; they don't make a sound by themselves, they're just buttons.

Basic Controls of the C3

The basic controls of a C3:

• Tone Generation: Your tone is created by these drawbars.
  • There may seem to be a lot of them right up here, but you actually have four sets of the same thing:
    • Two for each manual.
    • For example, when you select the B flat preset, you're operating on the first set of drawbars.

Drawbar Operation

• As you pull them out, that's where your tones come from.
• It's really as simple as that with two sets for each manual:
  • Bottom B flat
  • Bottom B

Vibrato Controls

Here we have some controls for the vibrato, which adds a vibrato effect to the sound you're using:

• Straight Sound: No vibrato.
• Activated Vibrato:
  • You've got a lot of different kinds:
  • Chorus vibrato
  • Straight vibrato

Commonly Used Setting: C3 vibrato at about 2 o'clock on the switch (Chorus 3).

Note: This has nothing to do with Model C3.

Volume Control

• The switch here is purely for the volume of the whole instrument.

Percussion Settings

• Over here we have percussion settings.
  • This adds a bit of an attacky bite to the top of the note.
  • You can hear that:
    • On, off, on.

Note: You can only use percussion on this set of drawbars in this manual.

• Generally, you reserve this set for your percussion sounds.

1. Types of Percussion:
   • Third Harmonic: The higher type.
   • Second Harmonic: Sounds a bit more woody and rounded.

Both work well in different scenarios, and that's basically it for the interface.

Additional Features

Swell Pedal

• Down here, we have a swell pedal.
  • This affects both the volume and changes the tone as you push it in (we're using a valve amplifier).
  • You have a lot of expression from open to closed.

Drawbars and Volume

• Keep in mind that the drawbars also affect the volume.
• It's often a compromise; if you change the drawbar setting while keeping the same volume, you'll have to adjust the swell.

Leslie Speaker Control

• Down here, we have a half-moon switch which controls the speed of the Leslie speaker.

  • Two speeds noted: chorale and tremolo (slow and fast).

• Foot Switch:

  • This might be called a brake switch, and it stops the motors entirely, keeping them completely stationary.
    • You can see if I press it, they go back to fast again, back to completely stationary.

Note: The bottom rotor takes a lot longer to speed up and slow down, which adds to the organ sound.

Conclusion

So that's your workings, basically. That's how the Hammond C3 organ functions!