GearFest 2016: Hammond Novachord

Date:2020/2/7 19:53:12 Hits:

Sweetwater was privileged to showcase a 1941 Hammond Novachord at GearFest 2016. This beautiful 1941 Novachord was restored over a five-year period by Joseph Fill of Indianapolis and is one of just a handful of fully restored Novachords in the world.

The World’s First Production Synthesizer
The Hammond Novachord is widely regarded as the father of the modern synthesizer. It debuted at the 1939 New York World’s Fair — just four years after the first Hammond tonewheel organ — and used oscillators, filters, envelopes, and modulation to craft its iconic sounds. This approach to synthesis would eventually inspire legendary synthesizers, including Bob Moog’s designs, for years to come.

A Technical Triumph from the Hammond Company
Laurens Hammond and his team of John M. Hanert and C. N. Williams found a way to derive a full keyboard of notes from just 12 tuned chromatic oscillators (one full octave). This was accomplished by dividing each oscillator’s frequency in half over and over again. This divide-down architecture became standard in later synthesizers. This principle gives the Novachord its 72 notes of polyphony — an astounding feat compared to the monophonic theremin and ondes Martenot of the time!

Housing 500 lbs of discrete analog circuitry, the Novachord still stands as a technical tour-de-force today. More than 160 vacuum tubes, over 1,000 custom-made capacitors, two 12″ speakers and a tube power amp, and miles of hand-soldered wiring are all contained in a wood cabinet that looks like a Hammond B3.

An Orchestra of Sounds
Neither piano nor organ, the Novachord’s organic and otherworldly sounds made their way into major motion pictures, TV shows, and music recordings of the early ’40s, leaving their stamp on the industry forever. You can hear the Novachord’s contributions on these soundtracks:

Gone with the Wind (M. Steiner) — intermission music
The Maltese Falcon (A. Deutsch) — Sam’s (Humphrey Bogart) post-drug recovery
The Ten Commandments (E. Bernstein) — plague sequences
The Twilight Zone (N. Van Cleave) — “Perchance to Dream”
Hawaii Five-O (R. Shores) — various music
Slim Gaillard Quartette — “Novachord Boogie”
Brother Bones and His Shadows — “Sweet Georgia Brown” (The Harlem Globetrotters’ theme)
Novachord Trivia

Only 1,069 Novachords were built between 1939 and 1942 when production was halted due to shortage of parts during World War II.
Fewer than 200 Novachords are believed to be in existence today.
The very first Novachord was presented as gift to President Franklin D. Roosevelt on his birthday in 1940.
The Novachord never resumed production after World War II. Its organ-like shape, size, and layout contributed to customers assuming that it was just another Hammond organ, instead of the unique instrument it was.
Special thanks to Sweetwater’s Director of Product Optimazation, Daniel Fisher, and The Foundation of Synthesis’s Marc Doty for their help with the Novachord’s history.

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