[Forrest] sent in his Hammonator Organ that he resurrected into a guitar amp. He re-used several of the original parts, and designed the amplifier around them. Tubes were chosen to fit the sockets, and the original transformer was adapted to run on the 120V usually found today.
12 thoughts on “Modding Old Organ Bits Into A Guitar Amps”
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I have an old Hammond right here.
I wonder how much the parts are worth to someone who wants to try this kind of hack?
this hack is totally useless without audio clips.
definitely a clever re-use of parts though.
woah, I have some hammond guts out in my garage and I was thinking about building a guitar amp from it for my brother-in-law… awesome!
Very cool, only thing I’d say is that it’s rather low powered.
Just make sure it’s not a Hammond B3. IMHO, one of the best sounding organs ever.
Nice. I have a Hammond AO35 reverb amp that I’m using for a similar project. As for being low powered, that’s exactly the point. Nice power tube saturation at a volume that doesn’t get the cops called on you.
Am I the only one that thinks he should replace the transformer on the left? I mean it’s starting to rust…
@7: It’s clear you’re no audiophile; the rust deposits add a subtle but important inflection to the odd subharmonic cross-modulation which provides a clearer reproduction of the amplified audio source. It’s unfortunate that this hack uses Bakelite knobs, though, because the Bakelite causes a distal vibration when placed so close to the metal chassis. This completely offsets the rust’s inflective properties and degrades the entire listening experience.
It’s still an interesting hack, though, if only from an academic perspective. :-)
I found out that mine is an M-2, fyi
A few answers to the comments:
If you want to deafen yourself, the amp can easily be rebiased
to work with 6L6 tubes (approx. 35W). 18 watt amps start to
distort (desirable) at a non-deafening volume.
The transformer’s not rusty, that’s the paper. The chassis
*is* rusty, but much better than when I started the project.
I’ve scraped lots of rust off with a wire brush. The rust
gives it character, imho.
Funny, I did something similar with the power supply/amplifier section in an old Tube console set (Radio, Phono, amp) The circuit was in good shape so I built a control & input box for it. Now I can listen to CDs (in mono…) with warm 6V6 push-pull output.
We recorded an entire album through old organ and pa heads. I love em. Another good source is old timey console radios.