Used and Refurbished Vintage Hammonds
On rare occasion we run across a used, vintage Hammond Organ from the years of the B-3, A-100, C-3, and M-3. A decent instrument is very, very difficult to find and I want to be certain that you understand why. Taking the venerable Hammond B-3/C-3 as an example, we know that Hammond Organ Company built these instruments between the years of 1955 and 1974 with the oldest of these instrument being 69 years old and the youngest 50. There is no question that Laurens Hammond should be congratulated for building instruments that are still functioning some 65-70 years later but "functioning" is not the operative word in this discussion, especially when one is thinking about an instrument serving in a church environment. Common sense (most of us still have that, right?) would say that electronic devices 50 years or more old would and should be suspect for potentially being problematic and certainly for no longer operating at the level of performance and clarity for which they were designed. How many of us have even a single electronic device in our home that is 50+ years old? Oh but there is an answer to that challenging question and the answer comes from those individuals promising what the budget conscious pastor and church want to hear.
Meet "Jake." Jake is both a salesman and a somewhat technically abled business fellow. He has discovered that a market exists for really nice, clean vintage Hammond Organs. The problem is that there are very few really nice, clean vintage Hammond Organs out there. What to do? If one cleans the tube sockets, fixes the dings in the cabinet, oils the tone generator, details the outside of the instrument, and maybe cleans the key-contact buss bars, the old vintage Hammond organ will actually function and play, perhaps not like it did when new, but certainly good enough that it will pass as a good, clean unit. The problem is that, inside, the resistors, capacitors, diodes, wiring, switches, electrical contacts, motors, gears, and everything else in that cabinet are still at least 50 years old, if not older.
"Jake" bought the old Hammond from an estate for $1,000 and put maybe 10 hours in the instrument making it the best it can be without breaking the bank, and then advertises it as "refurbished" or "completely gone through" or, if "Jake" wants to really stretch things, he might say, "fully restored." At any rate, with technician time valued at $60 an hour wholesale and assuming 10 - 15 hours in the instrument to make it look good and work properly, "Jake's" total out-of-pocket investment might be around $1,600-$2,000 but because it is a B-3, it is priced at $6,995 alone or $8,995 with an old "refurbished" Leslie Speaker.
Most small churches today are really stretched when it comes to budget and the temptation is to do everything possible to save money. Consequently, when a brand new instrument is selling for $10,000 or more (we have instruments for less than that but then so does the "refurbisher" have instruments for less than $6,995), saving $3,000 (or more) sounds inviting. The church doesn't have the money to pay cash either but they do have a credit rating allowing them to "lease-to-own" that fully "refurbished" Hammond B-3 (actually it really isn't a B-3 but an A-100 put in an old B-2 cabinet...but who's looking?). So, they enter into a 60 month lease for $6,995 and are paying $166.24 per month (Marlin Leasing's published lease rates...by the way, Hammond Central's rate on that same $6,995 lease would be $152.49 saving our customers $165 per year) on this 54 year old "refurbished" organ with every single part inside of it still at least 49 years old.
Eighteen to twenty months of payments go by and then, all of a sudden, that old Hammond B-3/B-2/A-100 develops a problem. The 90-day warranty is expired so out comes the technician who says he can fix it for about $700 all the while the church is still paying out $166.24 per month. The church bites the bullet and pays for the repair and the organ is again working but 12 months later it has a similar problem and the repair is another $700.00 and it isn't even paid off yet! The deacon who "found" the deal that "saved" the church $3,000 is suddenly no longer a hero because the lease is only about half over and the savings is now $1,600 because the church has already spent $1,400 fixing the "refurbished" organ and everyone realizes that the organ is not worth $6,995 and never was worth $6,995...except in the eyes of those desperately wanting to save $3,000...but they didn't save $3,000. They wasted $6,995 of the church's money on an instrument worth perhaps half of that plus the interest on the lease and $1,400 in repairs.
The unfortunate truth is that I am not making up this story. I see it happen all the time. We get calls from innocent church members trying to get "Hammond" to fix their "refurbished" vintage Hammond organ under warranty. Of course we're not responsible for a 55 year old instrument's repair any more than GM would be responsible for repairing someone's 1957 Chevy Bellaire, but we do hear the stories. The other way we learn of this sort of thing happening is when we miss selling a brand new instrument because Deacon Budgetsaver found a deal on a "refurbished organ that is just as good as a new one." So far, as the owner of Hammond Central, I can think of at least 4 churches where this has happened and we've gone back 3 or 4 years later to provide them with the new instrument they wish they had purchased in the first place.
We don't want you to think that we are bashing any of the legitimate Hammond restoration parts companies out there or the reputable technicians that keep the old instruments going. We are not. Just remember though that a money saving approach that sounds good often "sounds good" because we want it to sound good, not because it is good. Oftentimes what we want is really not attainable in the real world without paying the commensurate price.
I know a dentist in the Central Valley of California who is a Hammond Hobbyist and a very fine Gospel player. He has several B-3's that he has restored...not refurbished...but restored. He has hundreds of hours in each one having taken them completely apart to replace every replaceable electronic component, rewiring the entire organ and doing the best he can to repair all of the moving components. His instruments are as close as one can get to being truly refurbished. If a business were to do that level of work on an instrument, the investment would be thousands of dollars in tedious technician time which would drive the cost of any instrument to or above the cost of the typical brand new instrument, hence it simply is not done, as a general rule.
So, there you have it. Hammond Central may have, at some point, a pristine vintage instrument to sell. When we do, it will be with the understanding that it is what it is: a 50+ year old instrument that looks to be in great shape (for its age) but cannot be guaranteed to perform for any specified length of time. The old saying, "you get what you pay for" didn't just happen. It's an old saying because it is generally true.