[pianotech] Hammond Solovox

[Paul Mulik]

I came across something today that was new to me. I got a call from a new customer who wanted me to come tune her 1950s Wurlitzer spinet, which she said had previously belonged to her grandparents. Not a bad little piano, just badly out of tune. Anyway, attached to the front of the keyboard was a small 3-octave auxiliary keyboard, labeled as a Hammond Solovox, model K. She remembered that it used to work when she would visit her grandparents as a child. 

A bit of research revealed that these were introduced by Hammond in the late 1940s. The idea was, one could install this gizmo on one's piano, and then play the piano with the left hand and this little organ keyboard with the right. There is supposed to be a speaker cabinet that connects to the keyboard, however my customer had only the keyboard part. I called up a buddy who knows all about organs, and it turns out he has a cabinet, but no keyboard. I'm going to try to get these folks together to find out if the thing even works after all these years.

Paul Mulik
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