Hammond Novachord

The Hammond Novachord was not an organ at all, but rather the first subtractive synthesis synthesizer ever produced. The Novachord has a single, 72-note manual with 12 tube oscillators and five frequency dividers per oscillator. In total, the Novachord contains 169 (!) vacuum tubes.

There is an excellent introductory article on the Novachord on the 120 years of electronic music web site.

There is a chapter (which extensively quotes MikeFulk) dedicated to the Novachord in the book Beauty in the B (first edition only, see Bibliography.)

What Does It Look Like?

There are pictures at http://theatreorgans.com/hammond/novachord/.

What Does It Sound Like?

Here are some recordings (courtesy of HalDavis) of Mr. FredFeibel playing a Hammond Novachord. The original recordings are four 78 rpm discs in the Columbia Records Album Set C-76 which was produced probably in the middle to late 40s. (See also http://www.modempool.com/haldavis/novacord.txt.)

(These links lead to streaming MP3 files.)

1. Tea For Two
2. My Heart Stood Still
3. Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
4. I Want to Be Happy
5. Night And Day
6. Rose Room
7. I'm Getting Sentimental Over You
8. One Alone

Dating

MikeFulk provides this information:

  Serial Numbers     Dates of Production
  ==============     ===================
      1 -  360        11/4/38 - 8/25/39
   1101 - 1610        9/15/39 - 1/30/41
   1710 - 1877         2/3/41 - 7/8/42

Novachord Owners

Tim Stoel just (as of July, 2005) acquired a "new" Novachord, he's got pictures, and he'll be chronicling his restoration efforts at http://www.novachord.com (Here's a recording of Tim's Novachord, before he'd done much refurbishment. And here's what it sounds like now.)

?PhilCirocco is also currently (Aug, 2005) working on restoring a Novachord. He's got a web page about the project at http://discretesynthesizers.com/nova/intro.htm.

Other Links

http://www.oldtech.com/synth/HammondNovaC1.html

http://museslave.com/novachord/ --- Includes a registry of Novachord owners.

http://www.synthmuseum.com/hammond/hamnovachord01.html

http://www.organhouse.com/hammond_novachord.htm

http://musicformaniacs.blogspot.com/2006/02/novachord-lost-synthesizer.html

TopicHammondModels