[pianotech] Hammond Solovox

[Larry Fisher RPT]

It’s been a while since I’ve even seen one of these but I used to fix them ............  40 years ago.  When they worked, they didn’t sound all that good but hey back then, anything that made music and plugged in the wall was a good thing.  Tubes may be hard to get but for the most part, they were the more common octal types.  I just tried to remember some of the tube numbers but I can’t for the life of me bring them to memory.  I used to talk these terms in my sleep every day.  All gone.  Tuning them I think required playing with soldered in components.  A pain for sure.  The plastic on these things may be becoming quite weak and brittle.  Push the brown rocker buttons gently.  I used to punch at these things with an authortive poke.  They were only half as old then however.

There was another type of Solovox that had the buttons of an accordion like addition that took some talent to play.  The buttons, usually played with the left hand, created the single notes and a push bar was located under the palm of that hand that was pushed when a chord was desired.   The stand alone model had two bass pedals  ........  the root and the fifth of the chord.  The volume was varied by moving a knee lever.  They sounded slightly nicer than the first Thomas organ with all the rotary dials to create different tones.  The sound of both reminded me of a snake trying to sing with a stuffed up nose.  Dogs howling at sirens are more entertaining.  At least that’s something we can all learn how to do .... by man and beast alike.

When my grandfather died in the 60’s, I was given a box of goodies that he had.  In it, one of many things was a Hammond clock from most likely the 30’s.  To get it started you had to spin a small knurled shaft in the back of it.  On the front was a small window that would flash black and white to indicate it was spinning.   Hammond later used their knowledge and experience with synchronous motors to spin a small wheel with magnetic cogs on it  ..........  one such wheel for each frequency on a Hammond B3 for instance.  The cogs were sensed by an electro-magnet coil and amplified and sounded popular enough to become the envied sound of today.  

The wire insulation is no doubt turning to crumbs as we speak.  The short little piano keys were monophonic as I recall.  Typical operating voltages inside the chassis were pretty high around the tubes  ........  300 VDC comes to mind.  The keyboard didn’t have these voltages, just the power supply and around the tube bases  ........  the part your organ technician friend has.
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