Mike's 1956 B3 Mechanical Restoration

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1956 Hammond B3 restored for a customer. Mike plays all over the world as a session musician and got this Hammond B3 when he was in the USA. He purchased it as a restored mech item. He asked us to have a look at it and tell him what was wrong with it, as it didn't sound like our hire Hammonds. We found that

  1. it had new caps fitted on the generator but they were not selected items, these caps were purchased on the internet. Not all the new caps had been fitted. In fact some of the old wax caps were still in place but had been cut out of the circuit
  2. the generator had not been restored and had the pickups painted green
  3. numerous transfer coils had broken wires,
  4. the manuals had never been touched and had missing notes
  5. the Preamp was incorrectly wired and dangerous
  6. the mains tranformer had been fitted incorrectly and was the wrong type and the cycle converter was also incorectly fitted
  7. the cabinet was made up of parts from different years

All show and no go! His Leslie amp needed the same amount of work