Oh, no, what did I just collect?

**indianajo** · 07-29-2012, 03:09 AM

I'd have got the Elegante. 300 lb, 400 lb, whatever, that is why I installed the lifting eye above my front steps. I winch them up the truck ramp, too. My helper just keeps them from falling over, he has had a hernia, he lifts nothing. The last healthy helper I tried to hire ran away to the nearest bar to hide from a mere H.

**coffeebot** · 07-29-2012, 11:29 PM

I think that lady thought my son Noah and I were professionals. Had it on the furniture mover and out to the truck in minutes. Getting the M3 out of the entrance/music room and swapping places with the Commodore was increasingly painful. I barely had any mobility left to play it. Yet I soldiered on and composed a ditty for the occasion. Started out feeling like 300 but ended feeling like 450#.

There's not a whole lotta difference 'tween the N321 and the Commodore. Similar sound. Maybe I'll have to choose between the two instead of selling the M3.

**Wes** · 07-30-2012, 03:51 PM

Sell the M3? What? Does not compute! That's like dividing my zero!

**crysalis** · 07-31-2012, 08:26 PM

Take a drive east to Mentor and you can have my Concorde!

**Jim Dep** · 07-31-2012, 08:55 PM

Coffeebot, did you see that post above me ??!!! A free Concorde!! You've gotta do it, buddy! You lucky dog!

( I'll bet it comes with that Leslie 145)

**crysalis** · 07-31-2012, 10:42 PM

Originally Posted by Jim Dep

Coffeebot, did you see that post above me ??!!! A free Concorde!! You've gotta do it, buddy! You lucky dog!

( I'll bet it comes with that Leslie 145)

ROFL. Right...

*watches pig fly*

**coffeebot** · 08-04-2012, 06:18 AM

*whew* what an odyssey. Relinquished son's pc, cleaned it up, helped him clean his room, now he can double up the playing online RPG with his buddies. Only made possible by installing OS X 10.6.0 Snow Leopard on this old-ass iMac (grampy is using my real iMac). Now that everything has been reinstalled except for Photoshop (due to "will not install on case-sensitive HD...") I can read forums etc. again.

k, Where's this Concorde? I can come mos-tic ! Mos Ricky-Tick!!

Not gonna sell M3... that'd be plain crazy.

**paulj0557** · 08-04-2012, 07:51 AM

If you are getting a free Concorde make sure it is the later 1977' made 2300 or 2300M because the first Concordes- the 1972' made 2100's were very problematic, as in nightmarish.

I got my Elegante in Akron/Canton last Year for $150. Still going strong, everything works perfect. These are top heavy so a pain to move...lucky still no dings.Your Commodore just looks like an abbreviated version of the Elegante. Does it have key click? If so then that's a huge plus in getting it to sound somewhat real. I leave the key click on all of the time and on those occasions when I forget it's not on it really does kick in that good old Hammond personality when I reach over and flip it.
Looks like you don't have the 'Melody Maker' section. No big loss really. In fact it was the only thing on mine that I didn't use at all for the first 6 months because about two days after I got it the slider pot required pushing on it to get it to work. As I recalled those first two days of actually having these synth solo voices of the Melody Maker it was not that impressive so I just never fixed the pot. Well, last month I took the pot out and fixed it...MM still not that impressive. Nothing like the Wurlitzer Orbit or the Gulbransen Rialto II synth for that matter. Believe me, with your strings & sustain, repeat percussion ( if you have it) you won't miss the synth voices at all. You also won't miss a second set of draw bars...
I find I don't like the reverb ON on the Rotosonic (internal) Leslie as much as OFF, which actually sends the reverb over to the opposite ( left) side of the organ when off. I notice your organ has a different arrangement for orchestral voices for upper and lower manuals ( orchestral voices is just another way of saying non-draw bar voices in case you didn't know). The Elegante has String,Horn,and Diapason tabs for the lower manual, and for the upper it's Tuba,Post Horn,Kitura, Diapason,Violin (which is sort of redundant).

The BriteFoot voices are little used as well if you don't have those Harpsicord,Banjo,etc. it's not crucial. Also it's not that big a deal having percussion for 8 different harmonics LOL, but the Elegante has them all. There is also 'hold a chord' where all of the notes you hold on the lower manual stay down until you select another batch...if I ever lose a hand it will be, uh' handy. Also there is the popular one note chord function, that I'll never use ( they put that on there to sell organs to complete newbies to music). There is also a 'Pro Chord' tab. It puts an accent note above whatever note you are playing on the upper manual . It gets the info to do this based on the one finger chord memory. It's a little odd, but it could be useful on a measure or two. Again, something to sell organs with.
The auto bass is sometimes nice when I don't want to think. There is string bass and even a coupler to put the lower manual voice on the pedal...but not vise versa.

Looks like your rhythm section is the same. BTW you can program a sequence up to 16 steps of ABCD. Put AUTOVARI to OFF. Next push a sequence of up to 16 choices, then put the switch to ON. Now it will play that sequence.

The Elegante also has switches on both the inner and out edges of the swell pedal that do different things. You can even program it to operate the Leslie speed, piano over ride draw bars, drum break, etc.

Unfortunately Hammond never had a 'slide' pitch shift on the pedal like Lowrey and Wurlitzer. a great feature!

That's about all I can think of.

Indiana Joe has pointed out crucial capacitors to change for certain rom chips. I need to heed his advice once I get my organ into my new residence next week. Sounds like a must do so consult him on it or look though...Wesley what were those again?

I've been told you can tweak the trim pots for the preamp to increase the gain by fellow Ohioan Hamaround. He put a high powered 6x9 coaxial in his Rotosonic on his Concorde and used a 300 power amp to run it, and some sort of echo (pick one) for his Lenny Dee'esquesound. Sounds good to me-

Hammond Aurora Classic 3.jpg
The Aurora Classic is not just a golf match! Looks similar to your Commodore...who thought of these names??

**andyg** · 08-04-2012, 10:45 AM

Pro Chord is actually a little better than you describe (I'm assuming that yours is working correctly). It works like the famous and original Lowrey AOC in that it 'reads' the notes you're physically playing on the lower manual and adds them to a single note upper manual melody. The big difference is that AOC adds its notes below the melody. If you're using a 16' voice and play anywhere near or below middle C, the sound will get very muddy. Early Lowreys had a 16' AOC Cancel to avoid this, but it was soon abandoned. Hammond's solution was to add the harmony notes above the melody. No-one else did this, and we taught customers how to use AOC, AMC, MOC, OAC, Technichord, Wersichord etc etc.

There's an LP coming up soon with UK organist Bryan Rodwell on Concorde 2107, showing just how good that organ is in the right hands.

**paulj0557** · 08-04-2012, 05:27 PM

Originally Posted by andyg

Pro Chord is actually a little better than you describe (I'm assuming that yours is working correctly). It works like the famous and original Lowrey AOC in that it 'reads' the notes you're physically playing on the lower manual and adds them to a single note upper manual melody. The big difference is that AOC adds its notes below the melody. If you're using a 16' voice and play anywhere near or below middle C, the sound will get very muddy. Early Lowreys had a 16' AOC Cancel to avoid this, but it was soon abandoned. Hammond's solution was to add the harmony notes above the melody. No-one else did this, and we taught customers how to use AOC, AMC, MOC, OAC, Technichord, Wersichord etc etc.

There's an LP coming up soon with UK organist Bryan Rodwell on Concorde 2107, showing just how good that organ is in the right hands.

Yes, I thought to describe it in it's real time active playing mode, but I was generalizing as to how it operated. It's actually very awesome if not over done. It can inspire different directions to take a solo and even sound quite human once you get the hang of it. I do wish Hammond would have skipped the whole Fascinating Fingers business and just put a glissando/ arpeggiator strip there instead, or at least gave an option. I haven't seen many Hammond options outside of a few internal, but mostly externally mounted rhythm units. I see that Thomas even offered the equivalent of the Hammond Melody Maker's synth voices as an option on their mid 70's models as indicated by a recent image I saw of a Thomas Californian 287t theater organ with a row of yellow tabs on the lower right cheek block. These tabs even had images of real instruments like the Hammond. Who came first with these picture tabs? Probably some Dutch organ.