Do you have a name for the machine?

So far we’ve just called it The Bass Machine because that’s what it’s good for. It’s basically a chord organ, the chord part of a S6 Hammond that’s been saws-alled all apart. The original full thing weighs about 200 pounds and would be impossible to take to a show, but we use it all the time in the house—mostly the chord keys. It’s got two bass pedals but once you follow all the wires you discover that all the chord stuff is in one panel. The organ comes apart in a bunch of pieces of wiring so all you have to do is take that one main control panel. I guess I got lucky, I went to Really Good Stuff and I got this Victrola radio box without a radio in it, just the wood part. I bought the organ for $15 and I bought the box for $15 and soldered everything and it just happened to barely squeeze in there long ways. Basically it’s just a Saws-all, a drill, a soldering iron and then of course you lose the nice keyboard which is kind of a shame, but they don’t sound as good as like a B3. Woooo. (imitating sound as compared to a B3).

So how does it play with that trigger.

The way it works is like an accordion--the way the keys are. If you know how to play a full size accordion, it’s got all the notes layed out the same, but not in order. It’s like every other key is the next note up so you don’t play songs from left to right, low to high it’s more like learning by memorizing which buttons are which. Then the bar is one of the few controls—you have this whole rack of controls and once you take everything else off all you have is like three controls for the chord part. When you push the key down it doesn’t do anything, but once you push the bar down it kicks the chord in, sort of an over-driven chord. It’s like an accent bar that’s built in. So I mostly just keep the chord part off, punch in my chords and hit the bar sort of like a percussion, rhythmic way. So when you vary between pushing the button in and out and hitting the bar it’s kind of like scratching. Then you have your bass pedals, which are kind of fucked up in a good way. One of the bass pedals makes a note when you push it down and on the way up it hits a higher note, so it’s a double note each time you hit it which gives it kind of a bubbly sound.

So is it like one step higher?

It’s like a sympathetic step higher.

So because it’s connected with the chord it’s always in key?

Exactly. So between hitting the bar and playing this one bass pedal up and down you get like two bass notes and a chord all in whatever rhythmic way you want to do it. That’s about it. It’s pretty simple. I’ve seen a bunch of chord organs around, but not for $15. I got that one in New Orleans at like a junk warehouse, just full of piles of junk. It was missing a tube and I had no idea if it worked or not, but a friend of mine was driving me back up here so we strapped it on top of the car and drove. I just grabbed some Sovtek tube, like a guitar amp tube and everything was fine. I guess I broke some tubes in the process of putting it in there, but I got some from that organ guy in Hillsbrough.

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