Laurens Hammond with his 3D glasses

Laurens Hammond (January 11, 1895 – July 3, 1973), was an American engineer and inventor. His inventions include, most famously, the Hammond organ, the Hammond Clock, and the world’s first polyphonic musical synthesizer, the Novachord.

Laurens Hammond was born in Evanston, Illinois, to William Andrew and Idea Louise Strong Hammond. Laurens showed his great technical prowess from an early age. His father, William, took his own life in 1898, ostensibly due to the pressures of running the First National Bank, which he himself had founded. Upon her husband’s death, Idea, who was an artist by trade, relocated to France with Laurens to further her studies. It was during their stay in France that Laurens began developing many of his early inventions.

He was awarded the Franklin Institute‘s John Price Wetherill Medal in 1940 for the invention of the Hammond electric organ.

The Hammond XK3c

Hammond XK3c Review from Australian Mixdown Magazine December 2011 edition.

The depress­ing his­tory of the organ has been a steady but relent­less reduc­tion in qual­ity, orig­i­nat­ing with gar­gan­tuan pipe organs, which believe it or not can be traced back to Ancient Greece and require an appre­cia­ble por­tion of a cathe­dral to house, and cul­mi­nat­ing in mod­ern soft­ware sim­u­la­tions that do lit­tle to keep the legacy alive… Or so we thought. Ham­mond, a name syn­ony­mous with elec­tric organs, have remerged to tackle this down­hill trend head-on with the release of the XK-3C, and even a brief overview of the mul­ti­tude of fea­tures is enough to ren­der the most stub­bornly nos­tal­gic of organ­ists ever so slightly rigid. Now although the orig­i­nal Ham­mond organs were man­u­fac­tured as cheap sub­sti­tutes for pipe organs, it wasn’t long before their sig­na­ture tim­bre became revered among jazz musi­cians far and wide, and today, own­ers of record­ing stu­dios would hap­pily offer up a first born child in exchange for an orig­i­nal Ham­mond B-3, and it’s clas­sic mod­els such as this that Ham­mond Suzuki is try­ing to emu­late with the new XK-3C. This is a com­pas­sion­ate emu­la­tion in the style of the orig­i­nal B-3, but with far more fea­tures, porta­bil­ity, and sex appeal. But it is spe­cial­ized – if you’re look­ing for a key­board that’s more of an all-rounder, may I sug­gest we part com­pany here.

MODERN DAY CHAMPION

Tra­di­tional elec­tric organs pro­duced audio by uti­liz­ing a spin­ning mag­ne­tized cog in front of a pickup which forms a sine wave like tone, not sur­pris­ingly, this mech­a­nism is known as a tone wheel, and the Ham­mond XK-3C lov­ingly sim­u­lates this with 96 indi­vid­ual dig­i­tal oscil­la­tors, pro­vid­ing true poly­phonic sound, and breath­tak­ing authen­tic­ity. Har­monic over­tones are con­trolled with an authen­ti­cally styled full set of draw­bars for both upper, lower, and ped­als, and make exper­i­ment­ing with your tone addic­tively sim­ple. So with the pur­chase of another midi key­board and ped­al­board, you’ll have the ulti­mate B-3 setup with com­plete tonal con­trol. All the usual sus­pects are present in the form of para­me­ters, includ­ing the tra­di­tional rotary Vibrato and Cho­rus con­trol, Equal­izer, Tone, Leslie, and Key­board Split func­tions but there are many mod­ern addi­tions to this clas­sic setup. First of all, the pre­am­pli­fier is tube dri­ven, with two selec­table tubes, and a con­trol to drive the tube from vin­tage warmth through to rock­a­billy fuzz.

DIGTIAL REBIRTH

In the dig­i­tal realm, there is a bank of user Assign­a­ble Con­trols to make live use a breeze, a Pitch Bend and Mod wheel, Reverb, Amp and Cab­i­net sim­u­la­tions which sound stun­ning and include optional micro­phone angle and dis­tance for added tonal con­trol. The Leslie sim­u­la­tion is amaz­ing, and pro­vides the orig­i­nal con­trols for Brake, On, and Fast, which react with an eerie authen­tic­ity, but are made so much more ver­sa­tile with the dig­i­tal inter­face pro­vid­ing exact con­trols for speed. And get this, the XK-3C has a tra­di­tional 11-pin out­put for a direct con­nec­tion to a gen­uine Leslie speaker cabinet.

BUILT TO LAST

Any­one who has dealt with an actual B-3 will know that main­tain­ing the instru­ment is a career in itself, they are ancient and com­plex machines. This mod­ern equiv­a­lent how­ever is built to last, and with­out the mechan­i­cal com­po­nents, will prove far more reli­able than the orig­i­nal. It is a plea­sure to play, and the sound qual­ity is far beyond any­thing I have ever heard, and amaz­ingly pos­sesses a tim­bre sur­pass­ing all orig­i­nal B-3’s that I have ever had the plea­sure of per­form­ing on. The fact is, the orig­i­nals are never main­tained as well as they need to be. So yes, this is an expen­sive unit, but the XK-3C is quite lit­er­ally as good as it gets.

By Terry Hart

Click here to see the original article link

There you will find tweets filled with video, and information on the things that an Aussie Hammond lover might like. See you there.

The guest artist will be Lachy Doley and band.

where- 320 Pennant Hills Road, Carlingford NSW

Time- 7pm

RSVP- essential on keyboards@carlingfordmusic.com.au or phone 02 9873 2333