Hammond L102

This sample library was made to serve as a farewell to my beloved Hammond L102 Tonewheel Organ. This is an all-tube spinet style organ that I’d purchased from a classified ad while still in high school. It’s been with me off and on, but with another move on the horizon, I came to the realization that such an instrument is not conducive to apartment living, and that it was time to let it go.

Over the years, I have done a number of modifications to it, including adding a zener diode overdrive and removing the filter capacitors that Hammond installed in 1960’s models to dampen the keyclick, at the time seen as a flaw. I also paired the organ with a 760 model Leslie and improvised an effects loop to chain a better chorus and wah. These time-varying effects would have been impossible to sample sensibly, and I instead opted to capture the dry organ by micing the internal speaker with a Lauten Atlantis and UA 4-710d. The signal to noise ratio is quite low, especially with the higher harmonics, so a healthy amount of noise reduction was employed. Given how loud the motor is, this is still some in the instrument, as well as a noise file in samples, in case anyone wants to loop it.

Additionally, I captured impulse responses of the three spring reverb settings, and threw in my Fender Hotrod DeVille reverb too. I recommend following this instrument with a tube preamp emulation, vibrato/chorus, spring reverb, and (of course) a rotary cabinet.

There are two presets; an “imperfect” library that uses all of the samples, and includes some notes with buzzing, ringing, and tuning instabilities. I created a “cleaned” preset as well that removes the worst offenders, and fills the gaps with surrounding samples.

I hope the Pianobook community enjoys this library, and gets as much value and use out of it as I have from this fantastic instrument that I am parting with!

EXCITING UPDATE!!

An Ableton Edition of this library is about to go live (pun intended)! This isn’t just a different sampler format either. I was having trouble recommending high quality and free effects to pair with the original library, and hearing a Hammond dry is certainly hearing it out of context.

I took it upon myself create some Max for Live devices (included in the achieve) to simulate the unique Scanner Vibrato/Chorus featured on the larger Console organs, as well as a Rotary Speaker (Leslie), and Spring Reverb. Of course, these effects can be saved and repurposed on other tracks as well.

I intend to update the Decent Sampler version with some plugin effects (VST/AU/CLAP) at some later point as well, but it will be a big endeavour, and I have no timeline for it just yet. From what I hear, including effects/plugins with this library is a PianoBook first, and I hope that it is well received!