Hammond T-522 mods -- part I :-: modman's sonic electronic adventures :-:

24/01/11 10:59 AM

modman Male Belgium

Saturday, July 22, 2006

Hammond T-522 mods -- part I After some tinkering with guitar wiring and stompboxes, I stumbled upon a webpage that revived my longlived interest in Hammond organs: http://www.keyboardpartner.de/hammond/t-modifications.htm It's the homepage of a German Hammond tech who really understand the internet and has hence attracted international attention. He seems to be giving this information in order to boost his ebay store and that is rightly so. But first a word about Hammond organs. The novelty of the Hammond organ at the time of its conception in 1935, was it tone generator system. Instead of a wind-based tone system, like in church organs, tone are created by wheels spinning in an electrical field. Invention of the electrical guitar is not far off here. This church background is something to keep in the back of our heads all the time, because no matter how many jazz cats, rockers, funk and soul playas or country slickers immortalized this organ with a lot of great music, the fact that Hammond Company lived so long became so great is because they sold hunderd thousands of organs to people playing religious music all over the world. Thank you lord, for having thy Hand in the Hammond... By the time the Hammond was picked up by the jazz in the early fifties it had already achieved its definite configuration with reverb and tube amp built in, with external leslie. It grawled, honked, hit and screamed. That's good, btw. If you don't understand how a Hammond organ should sound, dig this. I know you will. That honky sound and hard percussive sounds are of course absent in organ with pipes, so Hammond tried hard to elimenate all that honky fatness from their organs. Up until 1975 however, they kept on producing tonewheel organs. The very last models are very interesting from a modders point of view, as they have (almost) every component to make it into something interesting: -built-in leslie speaker -tonewheels -reverb -percussion -chorus and vibrato but: transistor-based amp. This is probably the reason why they sell cheap, that is sometimes... I paid my T-522 124.4 EUR, but I see them advertised for anything from 450 EUR to 1300 EUR (even 1700 EUR one time... outrageous!). Well, out with that T-beast, then:

:: Links and Ressources:: Freestompboxes.org Forum Illuminist: Sol et Luna -- Soulsonic's fantastic blog Pedal Pirate: Fred Brigg's great blog moDMan's DIY Audio Ressources :: Electronic DIY Skills :: Piggybacking silicon transistors for that germanium sound PCB Transfer with laser picture paper PCB Transfer with INKJET picture paper PCB Transfer with NORMAL printer paper Aluminium Enclosure Etching with Picture Paper :: Germaniac Booster Project - Cook yer own GE Booster :: Part I: Basic Germanium Booster Circuit :: StompBox Projects :: Fat Boostered pedal NPN Silicon Ikea Soupa Fuzz NPN Silicon Rangemaster clone NPN Boost (Gus Smalley) pedal 'Gran Giah Supa Spinta' part I: PCB and preliminary design 'Gran Giah Supa Spinta' part II: Enclosure Etching with Photo Paper 'Gran Giah Supa Spinta' part III: Finishing and Testing PT-80 'Sound Dimension' Digital Delay part I: pcb & bench testing PT-80 'Sound Dimension' Digital Delay part III: boxing up + charge pump PT-80 'Sound Dimension' Digital Delay part II: enclosure design 'Boat's Ego Booster & Almightifier' part I: pcb and enclosure Dumble Overdrive Special - stompbox adaptation T. Escobedo's Jawari Sitar emulator Baja Trembulator: project by Bajaman :: Hammond T-series mods :: Basic 'Carsten Meyer' mods

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Hammond T-522 mods -- part I :-: modman's sonic electronic adventures :-:
Basic 'Carsten Meyer' mods Video samples after basic mods Essential links for T-series modding Tube preamp project preliminary Ideas for a built-in distortion circuit :: Dunlop Wah mods :: Dunlop JH-1 Wah upgrade Fitting a LED on a Dunlop Wah :: Electric Guitar mods :: Shielding and Stargrounding Electric Guitar Photo Essay 1987 MIJ Fender Stratocaster pickup upgrade 1990s CIJ Fender Mustang rewiring 1990s CIJ Fender Mustang Floating Bridge Fix JJ Acoustic: building a solidbody jazzguitar out of an old acoustic - Part I 2001 Epiphone Les Paul fixup :: Amplifiers :: Ruby: $10 Table Top Amp 98 EUR Harley Benton 5W all tube Dumbolito: Tweed Princeton + Dumble tone stack :: Fender Rhodes :: Tine Replacement

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The guy I bought I from had acquired it from a lady who had died. He had had it serviced for the last time 4 years ago. It has a noticeable heavy hum and the previous owner told me that it was solved when it was serviced but came back. The only thing that didn't work was the cassette tape recorder, the least of my worries. The previous owners had been so careful and even kept the original serial tag:

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24/01/11 10:59 AM

Finally assembled november 1974, every piece of this organ must be about my age. It was meant to be mine. The T5xx has a rhythm unit mounted under the cover, so if you removed the top, you also have to remove the unit. This is a drag because you have to unplug it and with the RU unplugged, lower manual and pedals don't work.

1. BACK TAKEN OFF

2. RHYTHM UNIT UNPLUGGED

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3. GROUND CONNECTION CASE REMOVED

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4. PCB SHIELD Can be removed by loosening the 5 screws on top

Now the different pcbs are revealed and ready to be worked on:

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5. RESTORING KEY CLICK In order to make the tones more flute-like the eletrical attack click was considered a fault in later years. This click was filtered out by putting capacitors on the drawbars. A first step is removing just some of them from the upper manual bus amplifier board. We will remove all of them later, but this is a fast way to put your toe in the water. Removing all of these caps will required other mods elsewhere, but we'll get there. 5.1. On Lower Manual Bus Amp Second row of caps from the top; one mylar and 3

Removed:

5.2. On Upper Manual Bus Amp

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After these mods, that phat attack organ sound start to give way, but it tastes like more. Lets remove all the click filter caps and proceed with the

6. REMOVING BASS ROLL OFF Another dreadful 'improvement' was the use of capacitors to roll off bass gradually with every tonebars. Console organs like B3s, C2s and A100 don't have this filtering and allow for bass cross talk even on the higher drawbars. We are not going to remove the lower row of mylar caps, but replace them with very high value polarized 10uF (yellow in picture) instead of the original <1uF mylars. The adjacent original electrolytes will be replaced by 47uF (black, standing up) These values are used for both lower and upper manual bus amps:

6.1. On Lower Manual Bus Amp

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6.2. On Upper Manual Bus Amp

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7. RECOVERY/INTERMEDIATE PREAMP BOARD CHANGES Removing filtering and opening up the bass response. I also replaced all electrolytes as they are bound to dry out after some years. Original board:

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Components to be modded removed:

Board finished and back in place:

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You can see the new mylars with resistors in series.

8. PERCUSSION AND DRAWBAR REGISTRATION PRESETS This mod introduced a B3-like percussion preset and changes the preset registration to some less cerebral settings: Jimmy 'Groove Holmes' Smith and Errol Garner Drawbar are just variable resistors the more you pull m out, the less resistance, the more volume. So presets can be created by a string of resistors to ground:

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9. TOUCH SENSITIVE PERCUSSION and NO MORE MULTI-TRIGGERING This is the truly ingenious part of the mod, swapping out an NPN transistor for a PNP in order to achieve that the percussion only triggers on the first note like in consoles. Furthermore you can set the percussion level with the trimpot.

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and a small cap 1.8nF for treble bleed when vibrato is on, so we don't lose those precious highs.

10. CHORUS DEPTH Just decrease the 12k on the Chorus tab to 6.8k. This really is a quick fix, and you could even decrease the value further, I eventually settled on 4.2k. Adds a nice soft touch, but off course its not like your averages Boss pedal. Still, Kon Sizzis in his build report, suggests using a inductor coil of 78 Ohm DC resistance and 278 uH. Something to try if

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I find one.

WHAT'S NEXT THEN? I'm glad I spend the hot July nights modding this baby, it almost got compulsive. Couldn't stop and feel helpless now most is done. The sound quality has improved considerably and it's a joy to play, lots of honk and heaps more click. It was difficult at time because the off board connections, normally just slid over the pins, were sealed with solder. I took some time unsoldering with one hand, pulling with pliers in the other hand at the pins. In order to put them back (ie flow solder with iron one hand) was easier by hand, so you can feel the direction of the pin. If and as long as your finger can stand the heat, that is. One thing is; the bass keys, after playing it some time, go realize that bass keys really do make it fat and there just not there on the T-series. Some questions remain, though... Humming amplifier. This is easily remedied had it not been such a pain to recove the power amp board.

Replacing the polarized caps will help for sure, but since I replaced the electrolytes I encountered, the hum has decreased considerably and is almost gone with 'Soft' on. So will leave that for now. Rhythm Unit. Really feel like kicking it out, getting an metal plate and fill it up with custom knbs for changing parameters, would make organ also less tall. Will a grounded power plug help the hum that's still there?

FUTURE PLANS FOR IMPROVEMENT Carsten used to sell minitube-based preamp boards for these T-series organs, but is sold out, so his site says. Did

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email him today for leftovers, as I already found the tubes I need on ebay. Let's hope...

24/01/11 10:59 AM

But maybe maybe we don't really need the tubes for tube sound as it's just about overdriving the signal and putting that in the leslie. I found a very interesting zener diode-based distortion circuit cooked up by Kon Sizzis It really is not over yet, but it is for today, I'm busted. MM

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December 31, 2010

07:35 PM PST

Hey Modman, I have a T412 w/no service manual and most info about this type of modification refers to the T512 or T200. Since I am not a certified tech and attempt to make some changes to my T412, can I rely on the T512 schematics without running into problems? Thanks...

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10:14 AM PDT

Best peace of article about the Hammond and its novelty of the Hammond organ at the time of its conception in 1935, great to know about it.

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Well, this is my first visit to your blog!Your blog provided us valuable information.You have done a marvelous job!

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June 28, 2008

12:01 AM PDT

Fantastic page. I am strugling with a buz sound at high volumes. It comes from the rythm unit and both keyboards, so i guess it's the power amp. Can hear it in both speakers and the leslie. Any ideas ?

Terence

September 6, 2006

10:08 PM PDT

Hi there Glad to see someone else tackling these beasts. I have a T200 and still am battling with the hum. I disconnected every input to the main amp and still it hums. All the Caos have been replaced and the only thing still to be done is to change the Zener diode on the 15volt supply. That will happen tomorrow. Regards and keep me posted on your progress

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