Hammond Fluid Column Reverb

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A.David.MacKinnon
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Hammond Fluid Column Reverb

Post by A.David.MacKinnon » Mon Oct 04, 2021 9:08 am

I was going to post this in the Latest Gear You've Acquired thread but I though it might deserve it's own thread.
I've had a old Hammond fluid column unit sitting in my storage room for ages and ages and this week finally got around to it. It came out of an old Hammond tone cab. I believe these were the first spring reverbs introduced by Hammond. For those that have never seen one it's a 3' high frame with a bunch of springs hanging vertically. One spring is connected to the driver and pick up, the others hang free and run into copper tubes full of oil. They act as dampers for the active spring and adding or subtracting oil can change the decay time. The driver is a speaker coil (a speaker without a cone) and the pick-up was a salt crystal element.
Info on these is pretty scarce online and it took me ages to figure out what to do with it. I finally got around to testing it with a mini class D amp on the driver side. I ran the pick-up into a DI and got a really, really, really faint signal. Turns out the crystal element in these are all well past their best before dates and almost never work. I took the pick-up assembly apart and replaced the crystal with a piezo, wired it up and bingo! It's working.

There's a little bit of ground hum that I have to chase down but otherwise it sounds extremely good. It's a bit boing-y on drums (as you'd expect) but when I dialed it on on a twangy baritone guitar track it was the shit. It's a tiny bit dark (which is OK) but the reverb is huge and remarkably smooth. I'm pretty sure some of the oil spilled out of mine in transport so the reverb time and tail are super long. I don't know if I'd change that at the moment though. It sounds really fantastic.

Now I've got to build a box for it and wire it into the patch bay.

Image

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Re: Hammond Fluid Column Reverb

Post by digitaldrummer » Mon Oct 04, 2021 9:57 am

that looks pretty cool!
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Re: Hammond Fluid Column Reverb

Post by The Scum » Mon Oct 04, 2021 10:10 am

I've got one of those in my garage that needs some TLC! I think I paid $.99 on ebay (plus like $30 shipping...).

Mine was oil-free when I got it, also. My understanding is you can refill with mineral oil from the pharmacy if you need to. If it's dark already, then there might not be much need.

The crystal pickups are known to be fragile, so you're lucky that it's working. Somewhere there are some resources online - I'm sure I've seen them before, maybe in the service manual that accompanies the cabinet they were found in? And various threads on organforum.com.

And, of course, the patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/US2230836A/en

Ralph from Zerotronics clued me in to them, he had a stack of them circa 2001. Don't know that he ever got them fully working...
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Re: Hammond Fluid Column Reverb

Post by A.David.MacKinnon » Mon Oct 04, 2021 10:13 am

My crystal was dead. Replaced with a piezo disk.

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Re: Hammond Fluid Column Reverb

Post by Scodiddly » Mon Oct 04, 2021 6:27 pm

We had one in an actual Hammond tone cabinet (along with the Leslie) when I was a kid. I don't think the reverb was working at that point, but it was fun to look at. Was recently thinking it would be fun to find one and get it working again.

I think I've got the service manual here somewhere, but things are jumbled up because I'm painting the living room.

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Re: Hammond Fluid Column Reverb

Post by markjazzbassist » Tue Oct 05, 2021 5:19 am

super cool!

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Re: Hammond Fluid Column Reverb

Post by drumsound » Tue Oct 05, 2021 6:44 am

Cool. It's nice to have a unique reverb!

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Re: Hammond Fluid Column Reverb

Post by A.David.MacKinnon » Tue Oct 05, 2021 10:26 am

Image

Boxed up and almost ready to roll. Just have to run out to grab an insulated 1/4 jack for the input from the amp and then paint the whole thing to match the rest of the decor.

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Re: Hammond Fluid Column Reverb

Post by Scodiddly » Tue Oct 05, 2021 6:56 pm

Here's a link to relevant pages from the Hammond service manual:

http://scotthelmke.com/Hammond_reverb.pdf

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Re: Hammond Fluid Column Reverb

Post by A.David.MacKinnon » Thu Oct 07, 2021 4:53 pm

Used this today on a steel guitar session. Steel panned 3 o'clock, spring panned hard left. Sweet Jesus, it's great! Crazy that I let it sit in storage for years.

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Re: Hammond Fluid Column Reverb

Post by drumsound » Thu Oct 07, 2021 11:47 pm

A.David.MacKinnon wrote:
Thu Oct 07, 2021 4:53 pm
Used this today on a steel guitar session. Steel panned 3 o'clock, spring panned hard left. Sweet Jesus, it's great! Crazy that I let it sit in storage for years.
Anything we can hear? A snippet, perhaps...

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Re: Hammond Fluid Column Reverb

Post by A.David.MacKinnon » Fri Oct 08, 2021 8:29 am

Sure. I'm the client and I don't object. Unmastered mix, 24bit 48k Wav -

https://www.dropbox.com/s/w5uujaxwwdbee ... k.wav?dl=0

The Steel & reverb are in the chorus and bridge sections. Steel panned right (at around 3 o'clock), reverb hard left.

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Re: Hammond Fluid Column Reverb

Post by vvv » Fri Oct 08, 2021 9:28 am

8)
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I mix with olive juice.

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Re: Hammond Fluid Column Reverb

Post by drumsound » Sat Oct 09, 2021 5:44 am

A.David.MacKinnon wrote:
Fri Oct 08, 2021 8:29 am
Sure. I'm the client and I don't object. Unmastered mix, 24bit 48k Wav -

https://www.dropbox.com/s/w5uujaxwwdbee ... k.wav?dl=0

The Steel & reverb are in the chorus and bridge sections. Steel panned right (at around 3 o'clock), reverb hard left.
Nice work, Dave!

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Re: Hammond Fluid Column Reverb

Post by CraigS63 » Sat Oct 09, 2021 7:07 am

That song is great, the reverb unit sounds fascinating.
I never heard about them before. Wasn't there an old stompbox that has oil in it?

https://www.dairiki.org/HammondWiki/FluidTypeReverb

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