Hammond M3

I ended up with a beautiful pristine 1955 Hammond M3 ("Baby B") organ. Thanks to the Seniors Club @ the Union Bay Community Hall. The organ didn't work, and sat unplayed for 20/30 years. The challenge was to get it running. It had a seized tone generator. I brought it back to life. It took over a month. Lots of Hammond oil, and cranking the tone generator by hand. slowly the oil worked It's way down all the wicks and into all the bearings. Little by little the generator began to spin. It finally started on it own, but was squealing and making a racket. Let it sit for one more week than finally it started really smoothly. I thought "ok, now what else will I have to fix or replace"? The Tubes in the pre-amp have 66 years of dust and dirt on them and you can hardly see if they are even lighting up. But amazingly everything works, all the features, switches, percussion, Vibrato, Scanner, I mean everything works, even the bass peddles....This organ is a gem!
A little demonstration of the "Baby B3" Hammond M3. I finally finished the percussion, and fold-back bass mod. I dropped the lower manual down an octave. It was a mammoth job! Very tedious and time consuming. Totally worth it! I decided to make this the most compact unit out of the organs. I hooked up a stereo quarter inch jack to a Leslie Half Moon switch to control the Neo Ventilator . I has Coral, Tremolo and even a Brake for that old school Jimmy McGriff, Jimmy Smith tone. I got it going through my "Neo Ventilator" into an early 70s Peavey Vintage Tweed 2 X 12 amp loaded with a pair of vintage 417-8C Altec speakers.