PermO
Well-known member
So I've got this this old Hammond L100 tonewheelorgan stinking up my living room for a couple of years now.
I got it for free as it was in a horrible shape, but I managed to get a sound out of it after the first tube preamp, vibrato amp, power amp are all broken.
Keys are falling off, and some notes don't play... I suspect this is the work of a mouse living in the amp section.
It needs to be discarded as it is not worth restoring it.
But there is one thing I absolutely love about this thing..
The bass notes (pedals)
So I had this crazy idea of collecting the tonewheels of the 13 bass notes with the coils and caps that go with them, stick m on an axle and drive them with a smaller size AC motor (by my understanding these all run the same speed as they sync to the mains 50Hz).
Instead of putting the pedals back, use a transistor to switch notes on/off (there's no velocity on a Hammond) and use a Arduino to trigger the transistors from MIDI.
What would result in a MIDI controlled tonewheel bass... I would love that.
Do you think this can be done, or am I missing something ?
It will be thrashed and trashed anyway, I will collect the transformers, speakers and the bits from the tonewheel assembly if this would make sense.
I got it for free as it was in a horrible shape, but I managed to get a sound out of it after the first tube preamp, vibrato amp, power amp are all broken.
Keys are falling off, and some notes don't play... I suspect this is the work of a mouse living in the amp section.
It needs to be discarded as it is not worth restoring it.
But there is one thing I absolutely love about this thing..
The bass notes (pedals)
So I had this crazy idea of collecting the tonewheels of the 13 bass notes with the coils and caps that go with them, stick m on an axle and drive them with a smaller size AC motor (by my understanding these all run the same speed as they sync to the mains 50Hz).
Instead of putting the pedals back, use a transistor to switch notes on/off (there's no velocity on a Hammond) and use a Arduino to trigger the transistors from MIDI.
What would result in a MIDI controlled tonewheel bass... I would love that.
Do you think this can be done, or am I missing something ?
It will be thrashed and trashed anyway, I will collect the transformers, speakers and the bits from the tonewheel assembly if this would make sense.