Model A Presets

[Gzlmann@aol.com]

My Model A (no. 1296) and I have been good friends for many years now. It's
the only practice organ I've ever owned and probably will ever own. In
several interesting details, the presets do not match the usual printed list.
 

Twenty years ago, I asked a Hammond expert about this. He assured me that ALL
Hammond tone-wheel drawbar organs from 1934 [sic] to 1974 had the same
pre-set registrations with only two exceptions (which he would have to look
into his file to refresh his memory about). So today I ask again. Is that
really so? No evolution, ever? Not a first go 'round, with changes at no.
xxxx, finally arriving at the final version to be perpetuated from no. xxxx
to eternity? Are there not records that would address this issue?

On the preset wiring board, all the wires as they are today are neat, clean
and tidy. There are no signs that this wire has been pulled over to there,
and this twisted back to here, and so on. Just as Virgil did with his Rodgers
and Carlo does with his Allens, I am sure that there were folks who had their
Hammonds 'tweaked up' just exactly the way they wanted them. (I can remember
as a kid that a local church musician whose Hammond got used for the
community Easter sunrise service every year took great delight in forever
demonstrating the beauties of his Echo Viole Aetheria 8' as set on low C# of
the Great. In more recent years, I've wondered how much different that sound
could have been than my Great C# rather more simply labelled just "Cello 8'
ppp")  

But it is doubtful that this is the case with this one.  I'm this child's
second owner, and the first owners at my now twenty-years-ago-inquiring were
still around to talk to about the instrument. They could assure me then that
nothing had been done to it to at least as far back as the mid-forties, right
after WWII. And as far as they knew, it had been a simple purchase straight
from the store. So if the present presets are not an earlier "standard," then
they were changed very early on.

A possible clue: When did the printed stick-on labels first appear? I'm told
that the first player-help was a little stand-up card that got stuck behind
the Great keys against the flat spacer between the manuals with the Great
names at the bottom edge of the card and little arrows pointing down and
exactly spaced to match the keys, and the Swell ones at the top edge of the
card with little arrows pointing up. A dealer once told me he thought he had
one in the bottom of a drawer someplace, but I wasn't able to follow it up at
that time. Anyway, my presets have little hand-typed slips of paper which are
scotch-taped on to the keys. And have been there since at least the mid-50s,
as that was when the organ got moved from the corner of the parlor to the
other end of the house into the new music room, and they were certainly there
then, owner no. one assured me.

Anybody have any info? Thanks.