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Having seen many other internal aspects of really old organ design, that makes perfect sense. Everything is reduced to something really mechanical when you get down to it. Eight discrete contacts would make sense and be in keeping with the rest of the thing.
Perhaps I should add that I've never opened up one of the faders Nord uses for drawbars either. In fact, at this point I'm wondering whether I should have opened my mouth at all, since I don't really know much of the detail behind these things...
Pablo: I wasn't trying to contradict! I never opened one either; just wondered how these worked since the Hammonds are very old design and they could have something different from current pots. I guess that those contacts get dirty too, but perhaps are very durable, who knows.
I didn't sense any contradiction there, and still don't see any. If anything, you made me think more closely about how that was probably done on original Hammonds. The innards of some of those things would fit right in on the Flintstones. This is spoken as a compliment. They were pretty clever at figuring out some Rube Goldberg looking solutions to their design challenges.
Pablo
These users thanked the author pablomastodon for the post:
Simplified version of how hammond drawbars work: signal enters thru a fixed contact on the sliding bit, and exits on either one of nine busbars (the metal things in the pic). From there it goes on to a transformer with 9 taps on its primary side, which is where the mixing/leveling happens.
These users thanked the author jacowannabe for the post (total 3):
I've never had a problem with the drawbars on my NE4D. And I use the drawbars a lot. Just as I do when I playing my Hammond B-3. I got my 4D when it first came out, so I've been playing it for quit a while now. No complaints here.
I hope you figure out what the problem is with your NE4D drawbars sooner rather than later.
I never opened one either; just wondered how these worked since the Hammonds are very old design and they could have something different from current pots. I guess that those contacts get dirty too, but perhaps are very durable, who knows.
