Good Books Pertaining to Tube Organ Design

[craftyjam]

I'm interested in learning more about tube organ design, as I've already ready a lot about tube hi-fi systems and guitar amplifiers.

I think it will be interesting to learn about the earliest active electronic instruments, but I can't find any texts specifically pertaining to these devices.

Any help would be appreciated!

 

[astouffer]

The Electronic Musical Instrument Manual. It has several revisions so the earlier editions have more pages dedicated to tube designs. Look up some examples on YouTube of people playing a Hammond Novachord. It's full of tubes and insanely complicated and sounds amazing for being designed in the 1930s.

 

[jjasniew]

the earliest active electronic instruments

Would that not be the Theremin? Or are you only considering those with equally tempered intervals?

 

[lcsaszar]

The best sounding organs are the Hammond B3/C3 electromechanical organs. They haven't got any electronic oscillators, but they use rotary toothed wheels and magnetic pickups instead. Apart from this they have an ordinary tube amplifier, and they sound wonderful.

 

[MarcelvdG]

If you can decipher Dutch (or if the schematics are enough): there is a series of articles about a three-octave polyphonic electronic organ using cascades of neon lamp frequency dividers in Radio Electronica magazines from 1957, see

http://nvhrbiblio.nl/biblio/tijdschrift/Radio Electronica/1957/Radio Electronica 1957-01-OCR.pdf

for the January issue, the rest can be found on the same site. For example, the May issue is

http://nvhrbiblio.nl/biblio/tijdschrift/Radio Electronica/1957/Radio Electronica 1957-05-OCR.pdf

 

[PRR]

Teleharmonium was the runaway success of early synthesis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telharmonium
https://magneticmusic.ws/telharmonium hist.htm (!!!)
https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a17086/first-synth-muzak-telharmonium/
https://archive.org/details/scientific-american-1907-03-09/mode/2up

What have you looked-at? I don't want to suggest stuff you already know. There is a book with Teleharmonium and ondes Martenot and many others, but my copy was taken.

 

[MarcelvdG]

Interesting! They are electromechanical rather than electronic.

This synthesizer from 1865 is also electromechanical, it was meant for research rather than music:

https://www.teylersmuseum.nl/nl/col...esizer-after-helmholtz-8-resonators-and-forks

 

[mickeymoose]

Electronic Organ Handbook by H. Emerson Anderson published 1960 by Howard W. Sams. E

 

[trobbins]

I've come across a few references via my Selmer Concert:
https://www.dalmura.com.au/projects/Selmer Organ.html

Here is a link to a 'thrilling' restoration effort of an electronic organ, if ever you think it is all too hard to restore such old instruments:
https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/showthread.php?t=121108