Clavia electro 2 Guida Utente

T

HE

 E

LECTRO

 2 

ORGAN

 

SECTION

The organ chosen for the task to be simulated was a 
Hammond A-100. Except for its cabinet and the inclu-
sion of a built-in sound system, the A-100 works the 
same as Hammond's almighty rock 'n' roll organ, the fa-
mous B-3. The Hammond organ was originally de-
signed to be an alternative for churches instead of large 
acoustic pipe organs. In the '30s, there was a growing 
demand for more compact organs that sounded similar 
to pipe organs because small churches couldn't afford or 
didn't have the space to install a big pipe organ. The 
Hammond organ was designed with drawbars for 
sculpting the harmonic content of the organ sound. 
They function much like stops on a pipe organ. This was 
the standard, and so it became (see figure to the bottom 
right of this page).

T

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AMMOND

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RGAN

 C

OMPANY

 

STORY

Has any other keyboard instrument created as much in-
terest as the Hammond organ? The model emulated by 
the Nord Electro 2 is the B-3, the most popular version 
of all Hammonds produced. Between their release in 
1954 and 1974 when they went out of production, near-
ly 275,000 B-3 and C-3 organs were built. (The C-3 is 
identical to the B-3 except for its cabinet design; Ham-
mond didn't keep separate records for the two models.) 
No other electric keyboard in the world has exceeded 
that number -- so far.

It started in the early 1930s, when inventor Laurens 
Hammond was looking for different applications 
for a 60-cycle motor he had designed for his clock 
factory. An earlier inventor named Thaddeus Cahill 
had, at the beginning of the 20th century, made an 
electromechanical instrument called the Telharmo-
nium, which later caught the attention of Ham-
mond. Although he wasn't a musician, Hammond 
was attracted by the idea to build a genuine electric 
musical instrument. Hammond had a degree in 
mechanical engineering and had developed great 
skill in mechanical design. In his lab, Hammond 
and his assistants designed and built an electrome-
chanical organ based on Cahill's principles. The ba-
sic components of the organ were tone wheels and 
electromagnetic pick-ups, and the instrument is ac-
knowledged as being of excellent mechanical de-
sign for its time.