Vox Jennings Univox and Hammond Solovox tech and sound check!

Bob Weigel of http://www.sounddoctorin.com leads us on tour inside and out of the original monophonic organ/synths. (With very simple synth features like footage selections and slow attack envelope on the Hammond) Actually the Hammond Solovox (produced from 1940 to 1950 nearly I hear) is a scaled down mono version of the 170 tube 500 some pound Hammond Novacord (Made in 1938!) Novacord was a full polyphonic divide down synthesizer like many transistor ones create in the 70's (Arp Omni etc.) Probably the most ahead of it's time musical instrument ever created.

The Solovox's tone cabinet contains the divider tubes and mixer tubes as well as a huge relay can that operates each time a key is hit. There are three relays that route signals for each of the three 'buss segments'. I said 'three buss' keyboard in the video but it's not three parallel buses but rather three single buss segments. 1 per octave. The footages are prearranged by those switches to be apportioned appropriately to the three buses.

THen after the relays properly route things from the high low and mid mixes, we go to the filters that are selected by the buttons beneath the keys. The capacitor ladder and mechanical vibrato are also housed therein with the knee volume lever that uses a set of resistances to gradually increment the volume.

We'd love to find more information on the Jennings unit if anyone has it! A schematic would be awesome!

The Univox has simplified things to get a great tube sound into a much smaller box by 1954. The keys are also much more playable! The short keys on the Solovox take some getting used to. Definitely some useful sounds!

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Jennings
• Vox
• Univox
• valve
• vacuum
• tube
• monophonic
• keyboard
• organ
• vintage
• antique
• Hammond
• Solovox
• demonstration
• technical
• electronic
• tutorial
• discussion
• sounddoctorin
• Sound
• Doctorin'
• Bob
• Weigel

[BoltzmannsBrain]

@sounddoctorin The speaking is very muddy sounding on my end. Not a typical problem here. It was bad enough to make it difficult to understand at times. Disappointing, as this is rather exciting to me. (I learned keyboards on Hammond gear).

[sounddoctorin]

@BoltzmannsBrain Sorry ...maybe I should wear a headset mic and get the whole production up a level :-). I'm kinda on a budget doing this stuff still. The tones from the unit at least sound good to me on my system.

[BoltzmannsBrain]

What's wrong with the sound quality on the video?

[sounddoctorin]

@BoltzmannsBrain not sure what you're referring to. It's an 8 bit camera but it's got the right settings in the video editor to deal with it.. OH ..unless you're talking about the half minute or whatever when I had a cord that started buzzing in the background. lol.

[tomdcour]

I've got a few of these- some work and some need help!

[jamie1707]

I loved watching this. Thanks!

[Screwschom]

bob weigel in the house!