Baldwin Model 45 Tube powered organ.

[Elrick]

I picked up this organ for free the other day. It's packed with tubes, about 40 6SN7, and about 30 12AX7's. The amp uses 4 6L6GB's in parallel push pull with I intend to eventually make a guitar amp out the amp and speakers.







Does anyone have any manuals/schematic or relevant literature on this model? The tone generator is the large item running across the back full of 6SN7's and the "Percussion Unit" is on the lower left full of 12AX7's, the amp is on the lower right it has a single 12AX7, two 5U4GB and four 6L6GB's.

 

[jaymanaa]

A bit blurry but those look like Jensen speakers to me as well. Time for a big hammer and a chainsaw. :thmbsp: I think you could build a screaming guitar amp with just a few of these parts.:yes:

 

[Patrick620]

Tons of good parts there. Nice score. I save almost everything on those down to the the nuts and bolts. Baldwin hand selected their 12a tubes for low noise. Green Baldwin labeled Sylvania on the ax7 and yellow on the au7 Some of the 12au7 tubes might be Raytheon Check the EIA code. Nice tubes, man. Hang on to them. Good iron also.

 

[captainclock]

Man where could i get myself an organ like that?! I'm actually in need of an actual functioning organ preferrably a tube powered one so I can service it myself. but all I see around me are those elcheapo 1970s vintage solid state organs which are crap to begin with (and yes I'm talking about the hammonds from that time period as well.)

 

[loonze]

Many people frequently service their own organs.

 

[captainclock]

Many people frequently service their own organs.

I know, that's why I would prefer to get one with tubes in it because any of those vintage and modern solid state organs are nearly impossible to service yourself without having to call out a repairman because nothing about those solid state organs are meant to be user friendly when it comes to servicing them. I actually used to own two 1970s vintage solid state organs (obviously not at the same time) one was a Thomas Transistor from 1973 and that thing was a rats nest of wires, circuit boards and relays and I couldn't figure out what went where when I tried to service it once to try and get the pedal board working. Then after the Thomas, I had a 1975 vintage Hammond L100 series solid state tablet stop style organ with cassette recorder and rhythm section and that thing had issues with the upper keyboard cutting in and out and I tried opening it up to see if I could spot what the issue was and that hammond was just like the Thomas was where it was nothing but a rats nest of wires circuitboards and relays and I couldn't make heads or tails of any of the circuitry and nothing was marked clearly on the boards and none of the wires were marked either so it was just a mess. I ended up just pitchng those organs because my parents didn't have the money to call out a service guy to get the organs going. Plus the thomas was a freebee and the Hammond was $50 and when my parents got them (at seperate times obviously they got me the hammond after I got rid of the Thomas) they were told that they had issues and that they weren't actually worth fixing which is why they were going for so cheap.

 

[Andyman]

Those 12AX7s look to be the bluish white labels which I think are the Japanese made ones. Raytheon Matsushita, I believe. i'm listening to some 6BQ5s of that logo right now.

Nice tubes. You did well!

 

[captainclock]

OP The organ you have there looks to be too nice of an example of an early Baldwin to butcher up I think you should keep it as is and try to learn how to play the instrument. But that's just the vintage/Antique organ enthusiat in me talking. :scratch2:

 

[Elrick]

Captainclock, I will feel a twinge of conscious when I begin to disassemble the organ but the truth is there are very few people who would even take one of these it you paid them. They are simply too big and heavy to ship and the type of person who's a keyboardists and vintage tube nut that also has unlimited space is very rare. I plan on removing the speakers, chassis and connectors, etc and then carefully unscrewing the frame piece by piece. Hopefully it's not also glued together. I plan on saving all the wood and grill cloth to build the guitar amp and maybe other projects. I'll save the pedals and keys for who know what!

I took a look at the tubes and noted that about 90% of the 6SN7's are Sylvania's with a few GE's. About 90% of the 12AX7's are GE's with 59-09 codes, there's s couple Tung Sol's and a few others I can't remember. The 6L6GB's are GE's with 58-26 and 188-20 below in the second line, these all have bright red paint on the bottom of the index shaft. I guess that was to indicate a matched set?

I did briefly power it up on a big variac to about 105 V and it actually played, but was weak and tired. I was careful not to overdo it. I just wanted to hear it make music one more time. There was no smoke or fire and little hum but it sounded like the vibrato was working overtime.

I suggest scanning the free section of CL, but you are correct most all are newer solid state snoozers.

 

[captainclock]

Captainclock, I will feel a twinge of conscious when I begin to disassemble the organ but the truth is there are very few people who would even take one of these it you paid them. They are simply too big and heavy to ship and the type of person who's a keyboardists and vintage tube nut that also has unlimited space is very rare. I plan on removing the speakers, chassis and connectors, etc and then carefully unscrewing the frame piece by piece. Hopefully it's not also glued together. I plan on saving all the wood and grill cloth to build the guitar amp and maybe other projects. I'll save the pedals and keys for who know what!

I took a look at the tubes and noted that about 90% of the 6SN7's are Sylvania's with a few GE's. About 90% of the 12AX7's are GE's with 59-09 codes, there's s couple Tung Sol's and a few others I can't remember. The 6L6GB's are GE's with 58-26 and 188-20 below in the second line, these all have bright red paint on the bottom of the index shaft. I guess that was to indicate a matched set?

I did briefly power it up on a big variac to about 105 V and it actually played, but was weak and tired. I was careful not to overdo it. I just wanted to hear it make music one more time. There was no smoke or fire and little hum but it sounded like the vibrato was working overtime.

I suggest scanning the free section of CL, but you are correct most all are newer solid state snoozers.

Yeah you're right about that, its just very sad that these old organs like this often times end up in the landfill because nobody is interested in them anymore and the people who are interested in them are usually trying to downsize.
My great-grandparents had an old Hammond M3 organ (the baby B3) that they had in their living room for many years at their old farmhouse and I always wanted to play it but never got the chance to because the organ was once left on for almost 3 months straight and because of that it quit working and I always wanted to have that organ for myself but never got a chance to get it because my grandmother ended up giving it to a friend of hers.

And my Church camp I went to when I was growing up had 6 Hammond organs on their property one of them a large Model G series Church Organ with built in Chimes and presets and pipe organ stops and built in lighting that was completely tube powered and had the classic tone generators in it and everything the rest of the organs that my camp had were old Hammond M2 and M3 organs scattered about around various buildings, and an old Tube powered Conn Organ. All of those organs they threw to the trash heap because they thought they were worthless and couldn't be repaired/restored anymore. Boy would of they been surprised had they known that they threw over $500,000 worth of organs in the trash.

 

[JPG7B]

I have had to part out a Baldwin 45 organ but kept all the electronics. I am looking for the schematics because I would like to use the amp as well as a HiFi amp or a guitar amp. Any help would be much appreciated. Regards

 

[hammr7]

Good find and good luck. Lots of usable components for your repurposing needs. You can likely find schematics at one of the organ forums, or perhaps from Baldwin. And I have regularly seen service manuals for most Baldwin tube organs on Ebay.

If you have a 2-channel amp, you need to look at what is feeding each channel, since many (most?) multi-channel organ amplifiers had non-symetrical channels. The most popular designs ran higher frequency outputs on one channel, lower frequency outputs to another. Alternately, you could have one channel for each keyboard and a different channel for footpedals (or built-in Leslie units). If you ever want to go stereo you may need to find a matching OPT to the organ channel that best suits your need. For audio use I have sometimes found it easier and cheaper to find a pair of the same multi-channel amps than to modify the dissimilar channel to one I wanted.

 

[trobbins]

The main amp chassis schematic is linked below.
http://dalmura.com.au/projects/Baldwin Mdel 45C PP 2 channel Amp.pdf
http://dalmura.com.au/projects/Baldwin Model 45 PPP Mono Amp.pdf

It looks like the 45, not the stereo 45C, at the start of the thread.

If anyone comes across such an organ, the oscillator panels are likely to come in handy for experimentals, or could be donated to anyone keen to play around. A recent thread on UK vintage radio was a guy keen to make up a very vintage and exclusive Hammond Novachord ( http://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/showthread.php?t=133574 ) - just goes to show what interest may be around.

 

[Rog50]

That one is a beaut.

There's an antique store up here that has been trying to flog one for two years now, asking 400 dollars for it still. They of course claim there is that much value in the tubes.

I have dismantled four organs now, an M3, a M100 and a L100 plus one Wurlitzer. Awesome iron in all of them. The Wurli and the M3 both had Jensons which I am using as guitar amp speakers. The other two had Rola's and Heppners. Only the Jensons, a P12P and P12Q are of any use in a guitar amp, the others just do not cut it. Those speakers are pretty ancient and rather low power so I treat them as if they are fragile.

Maybe consider using one set of those irons to build a mono hifi amp. Perhaps the speakers would work nicely for that. I had hooked up my Rolas to my Viking mono hifi amp but they are back to hanging on the shop wall for now.

Anyhow goodluck.

 

[volvogv]

Man where could i get myself an organ like that?! I'm actually in need of an actual functioning organ preferrably a tube powered one so I can service it myself. but all I see around me are those elcheapo 1970s vintage solid state organs which are crap to begin with (and yes I'm talking about the hammonds from that time period as well.)

Captainclock, I don't know if you're still on but have you looked at old Rodgers or Allen organs? They were used in churches and concert halls and vintage models are easy to find and not very expensive. The sound of these is WAYYYY better than Baldwin, Conn, or Thomas. And parts are still available! If you want to go OLD school you could pick up a reed organ fairly cheap that requires no electricity, only a little foot pumping and one in good condition sounds surprisingly good! I've owned two of them.

 

[hammr7]

Most of the older Rodgers Organs are solid state (don't know if Rodgers ever made a tube unit!) and are much better intact, as they are beautiful organs that can still be serviced.

The Allen tube organs are increasingly difficult to find. Allen was among the earliest to convert to transistors for tone generation. Many tube amplified units were converted to solid state amplifiers over their years of continuous service.

None of the tube organs, from any supplier, are easy to maintian as organs these days. Too many capacitor failures that are costly and time consuming to troubleshoot. Tubed Hammonds are good to maintain other Hammonds, and for use by budding musicians. Hammonds are the only old organs that are in constant use by Jazz and Rock musicians. Virtually any other brand of tube organ is better used as parts, although I have been involved in keeping some tubed Allens going as temporary substitutes in larger venues.

 

[volvogv]

That's correct. Rodgers never made a tubed organ. They started in 1958 making the first transistorized organs. I worked at the factory from 1988 to 1995 and at that time they were still able to make parts for all of the models going back to the beginning. They are very fine instruments. Starting in 1993 they went digital and you can forget servicing them. At that point it become card swapping and we would repair the boards at the factory with special equipment. But for the hobbyist..........where's the fun in that? The best analog Rodgers organs were make in the late 1980s in my opinion.

 

[Elrick]

I see my old Organ thread has re-appeared. I converted it into a simple amp using an old Akai R2R player as a preamp and either a guitar or FM tube receiver as the source. Here's a pic.

 

[fingers5]

still learning as to which organs are tube bonanzas and which ones aren't. The baldwins I have picked up have had tube amps and Jensen speakers (c12r's - spec'ed speakers for certain fender amps) but the tone generators were solid state.