From bruce@ashbysolutions.com Thu Feb 28 19:23:31 2002
Subject:Re: official New B-3 page..

Mark,

>Etienne, busbars are one of the essential electromechanical components,
>along with tonewheels, chorus/vibrato line, that make the Hammond sound what
>it is. The H/S engineering team concluded that by incorporating busbars,
>the anomalies such as key click, harmonic crosstalk and others that have
>become inseparable with the "Hammond Sound" we all so desire are not
>reproduced digitally.

I agree that buss bars are part of reason for the illusive "organic" (no pun intended) qualities often associated with the Hammond B-3. The key click and drawbar triggering on a Hammond are not uniform across all keys, and they do not always occur in exactly the same manner on successive key presses, or with different players. While it is possible to simulate this digitally, the necessary CPU horsepower is way too expensive at this date. (Then again, the CPU horsepower to provide the modeling of the CX-3 and VK-7 was way too expensive ten years ago, so we'll probably get there someday.) Adding nine switch contacts is a straightforward means of re-introducing this randomness and variability back into the instrument.

The only question is whether the cost that Ham-Suz has placed on the feature is justified. Combo organs of the 60's like Vox and Farfisa used buss bar keyboards with nearly as many contacts (4 to six per key), yet their cost was not astronomical. Considering that a 61-key two-switch keybed can be purchased in OEM quantities for less than $100, I would not expect the cost of the new B-3 keybed to exceed, say, $500 per manual. The electronics to control such a keyboard would be a bit more complex than that of a standard clone, but again, not incredibly so. I would still expect that H-S could sell the unit for $10-12K if they wanted to -- or to put it another way, for the cost of four CX-3's.

I wonder whether H-S would be better off trying to sell 1000 units at $10K, rather than 200 units at $25K. The net profit would be at *least* the same, and the market penetration would be 5x.

Oh, and BTW, while the buss bar design contributed to the harmonic crosstalk in the original B-3, that was because of the electro-mechanical design of the tone generators. In a digital instrument such as the new B-3, I doubt that buss bars have anything to do with the level of crosstalk in the instrument.

Regards,

-BW

--
Bruce Wahler
Ashby Solutions™ http://music.ashbysolutions.com
CloneWheel Support Group moderator
978.386.7389 voice/fax
bruce@ashbysolutions.com