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carlo,

Thanks for the info. I was aware of the differences, but I'm sure many of us
weren't.

The point I was trying to make was that it seems a pretty safe guess that
back in '34 Hammond was trying to sell his new invention to organists,
though it's arguable whether it was truly an organ by the definition in
place at that time. Even with 20/20 hindsight, it was more of an additive
synthesizer than an organ.

I think he wanted to give organists controls that were at least visually
familiar, even though the function was somewhat different. The drawbar
frequencies do correspond to pipe footages in use on pipe organs of the
time, even though they're not labeled as such. But, being created by sine
wave generators, they all sounded the same. It was like a single rank organ.
In order to duplicate different ranks of pipes, like Tibias, or Diapasons,
he would have needed separate Tone Generators, with different filters, and
more sets of Drawbars. Pipe organ builders made mechanical changes, such as
wood vs. brass pipes, and using different reeds to achieve this.

But, the Hammond organ wasn't an attempt to perfectly duplicate a pipe
organ, with electrical sound generation. It was a completely new instrument.
I'm sure that Laurens felt he was able to create a more logical layout, by
starting with a clean sheet of paper. He used the possibilities that
electrical control gave him to "improve" on an existing idea by making the
volume of each stop variable. Pipe organ designs are based on centuries of
trial-and-error. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but that wasn't Laurens
Hammond. He was an innovator who always believed in thinking "outside the
box".

Now, where he ever got the idea to have an octave of reverse-color keys at
the lower end of the manuals, and use them as "presets" (in synthesizer
lingo), or "rank couplers" (these originally had labels with names that at
least sounded familiar to organists), is anybody's guess. (Of course, pipe
organs don't have true vibrato, or percussive sounds, either.)

If you look at the Model E, released just a couple of years after the A, its
presets are typewriter keys, and are labeled with names. I think this was in
response to organists who didn't like the unorthodox preset keys. This was
also the first Hammond with the AGO 32-note pedal. It also had foot pistons,
and two expression pedals, one for Swell, and one for Great & Pedal. It had
more traditional organ-like features than the A, B, C and D models.

In truth, Hammond had developed something new, and unique, and wonderful,
but the only hope he had of selling them, was to swing musicians his way by
marketing it as an improved version of an existing instrument. Note the
failure of his amazing Novachord, which was SO different, that it couldn't
be wedged into an existing niche, and musicians of the time had no idea how
to play it.

In the end, Hammond must have been right on target with his combination of
cutting-edge technology and traditional organ trappings in a parlor
piano-looking package. He sold untold thousands of them over a 40-year
period. They are so highly-regarded today, that many people are still trying
to copy the sound, controls design, and appearance. In fact, I think it's
safe to say that Hammond permanently changed the definition of "organ".

BCV-KG