Hammond Organ B3 Mark 1 Busbar Cleaning

We recently worked on a Hammond B3 Mark 1 with dirty sounding notes. The notes would sporadically go in and out and the overall tone of the organ sounded gritty. In most cases this is caused by the busbars becoming dirty and worn. Alot of the time, simply shifting the busbars will solve this problem. However, that procedure did not solve the problem for this organ.

Cleaning the busbars are a big job and you definitely need a professional to performer the cleaning. So many things could go wrong in the procedure and harm on of the busbars. That is why I am not giving out instructions on how to do it because I know the second I do, there will be people complaining about ruining their organ. Simply putting a little kink in the wire or touching it with your bare hands will completely ruin part of that busbar. So, I repeat, do not try this procedure unless you are a professional.

I will explain how busbars work though, in New B3 organs. In this organ there are 10 wires that run the length of the manual. When a key is pressed, key contacts brush up against these wires. These wires hold the drawbar information. If no drawbars are pulled out while a key is pressed, then no sound will come out, but once the drawbars are pulled, then the note starts to play. The busbars represent each of the 9 drawbars. Now, you may be wondering why there are 10 busbars in the new organs, that last busbar is named keydown. I presume it does exactly what the name implies, it tells the processer chip that a key is down and being pressed. However, I do not know this for fact.

So if one of the busbar wires become worn or dirty then your electrical contact quality will suffer, and you will have shaky or dead notes. The only way to clean them is to completely remove the manuals and pull the busbars and clean them one by one. It takes me several hours to do this, simply because I take my time in carefully removing each one without bending or kinking the wires. Like I said one wrong move could be disastrous. However, the results are amazing and speak for themselves.

If you have a Hammond B3 that needs repair work just contact us below. We would love to help!