From bruce@ashbysolutions.com Fri Oct 18 07:24:54 2002
Subject:Re: BX3/CX3 Tweaks and Bugs

Hi Chuck,

>I just got a BX3 and I'm fairly happy with it.
>There is one thing that's a little weird about it. I also checked
>out a CX3 and the same thing happens on the CX3. I went through the
>drawbars one by one checking the overtones as I played up and down
>the keyboard. I found that the 1' tone was not even across the
>keyboard. On the highest two octaves the G is louder than the rest
>of the octave. I didn't check my B3 as a comparison but I don't
>think a B3 sounds like that. The tones, of course, get higher as you
>go up and maybe a little thinner at the highest octave but some keys
>are not louder than others in the middle of the scale.
>Could it be that this is some strage quirk in the way they sampled
>the tones?
>It's very noticeable if you are playing the 88800008 patch.
>Depending on how you voice your chords, you can hear the high 1'
>drawbar very well and in other places it's very weak or gone
>altogether.
>When I checked the CX3 I noticed the same thing on that board.
>Has anyone noticed this on their organs?

This is a copy of a phenomenon that is pretty common on Hammond organs. I can't say that it happens exactly the same on your B-3, because there is no such thing a perfect "reference" B-3 -- they all sound a little different, and depending on the amount of use and moving around, they can drift a bit over time -- but the drawbars do not absolutely track across the keyboard.

The reason that you are hearing this symptom in the middle of the keyboard is that the voicing you have chosen, 88 8000 008, uses a tone on the highest drawbar that folds back; i.e., it repeats itself 2-1/2 times over the keyboard. In the highest octaves, every time you scale up to a G, the pattern starts repeating, and the G is much more audible than the highest C. This foldback is necessary because Hammond chose to produce 91 oscillators, while the actual footages require over 100 tones, if they produced all of the tones at the mathematically-correct pitches. Most console Hammonds, including the B-3, repeat the 16' drawbar in the lowest octave -- for a different reason -- and all tones above High B on the 2-2/3' drawbar. (Many pipe organs repeat footages, too.)

Regards,

-BW

--
Bruce Wahler
Design Consultant
Ashby Solutions™ http://consult.ashbysolutions.com
CloneWheel Support Group and HiNote moderator
978.386.7389 voice/fax
bruce@ashbysolutions.com