MOTM

--- In motm@egroups.com, elhardt@a... wrote:
> improv@p... writes:
> 
> >>I too am a recent recipient of an organ transplant: a few weeks 
ago I was 
> given a Hammond M3, 1957 vintage spinet-style tonewheel organ.<<
> 
> My family inheritted an M103 with a Leslie when my grandfather died 
when I 
> was young.  But those little spinet models just don't seem to have 
the heavy 
> full sound of a B3 as far as I can remember.  So it might not be a 
real close 
> comparison.

Now you're on MY turf<g>! The M-3 is regarded as being the BEST 
spinet to have, if you can't have a console. It has all the right 
guts, a true vibrato scanner like the consoles (the L-100 series does 
NOT), the "waterfall" style keys like the big boys, percussion, and 
no extra frills. 

The differences: shorter keyboards and less pedals, of course; fewer 
drawbars on the lower manual; and the upper drawbar tones don't "fold 
back" down to lower pitches as you play higher on the keyboard, they 
just go silent. This last difference is the main audible one. If you 
play in the top octaves of the top keyboard, with a sound having lots 
of upper drawbars pulled out, the M-3 (and all spinets) will sound 
somewhat duller than a console such as a B-3, C-3, or A-100. But if 
you play 888000000, you won't hear much of a difference at all. Some 
fanatics have rewired their keyboard manuals with the extra contacts 
necessary to recreate the console foldback.

Moe