HAMMOND ORGAN & THE LESLIE SPEAKER
THE HISTORY OF HAMMOND
Founded by Lauren Hammond in 1935, the Hammond Organ Company has earned its reputation with organists and music lovers alike. Originally marketed as a low cost maintenance alternative to a traditional pipe organ, Hammond Organs not only gained popularity throughout the church community but also with jazz artist, such as Jimmy Smith, Joey Defrancesco, and many more. Throughout the 1960's and 70's, Hammond once again saw their instruments being adopted by a more unconventional musical genre, rock & roll. Famous bands including Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, Boston, Yes, and many more feature Hammond organs in their music. In the 1970s Hammond began to stray away from there original design of their organs with the removal of the tonewheel generator and the adoption of
a transistor tone generation circuit in its place. These new Hammonds were far less popular than their traditional counterparts, and unfortunately due to a decline in sales Hammond closed their factory doors in 1985. The Hammond name was purchased in 1989 by the Suzuki Musical Instrument Corporation and is now know as Hammond-Suzuki, where they continue to produce instruments today using modern technology to replicate the sound and look of the original Hammond tonewheel organs.
Laurens Hammond working on a Hammond novachord