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This B-3 buyer's guide was submitted by AlGoff to the OriginalHammondLeslieFaq.


Some considerations for a typical B-3 purchase

If you happen to find a B-3, remember that it is at least 34 years old, with a last-model-year (1974) organ, among the hundreds of thousands sold throughout their 30 years of production.

The average B-3 found in the used-organ market is around 33 years old. The average B-2, C-2 and other older model Hammond approaches 40-50 years old, regardless of the cabinet condition.

Then, pick a preset and drawbar group and pull out the ?first drawbar from the left in that group (brown) and play from the first "C" note to the last "C", a total of 61 notes. It is normal for the first octave of tones to repeat on B-3 and similar organs due to the manual wiring. (This is not the case in some very early models) Then, push in the first brown drawbar and pull out the last white drawbar and starting from the second "C" (notice it's the same tone as key #61, last "C" was with the first brown drawbar out) on the same manual, play all remaining notes up to F# an octave from the end where the notes will again begin to repeat. This repeating is called foldback and is very important to the classic B-3 sound.

TopicTroubleshooting

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