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DIY Hammond Clone


PhilipC
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Hello everyone,
I am a physics student who plays the Hammond. Finally I graduated and I am moving away from my family, but that means I will not have an Hammond to play anymore. Given the very high prices for clones, I would like to build a MIDI clone.
 
I was thinking about a configuration using 2 Fatar waterfall keybeds, a B3 drawbar assembly, and some random knobs and switches. I was also thinking about using MIDIbox for the processing. 
 
I have a spare STM32F4 Discovery board lying around, and a spare B3 drawbar assembly.
 
The configuration would be:
- 2X 5 octave keyboards (130 switches.) optionally i would like velocity (260 switches)
- 38 drawbars (potentiometers)
- approx. 20 switches
- approx 6 potentiometers.
 
What configuration would you suggest to use with Midibox? NG? KB? Is this doable with midi box? What is STM32F4 support state?
 
Thanks for your time,
Philip
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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi

I would make it so much simpler. Maybe its so simple for you but its not "must have" setup for you.

As you know - you may find tons of free vst plugins on internet. I even have somewhere that quasi hammond plugin its made by someone from Germany (doesnt matter). Anyway you will need also vst host which is also free (i dont remember website). It depends which version you use - you may play only one plugin or you may use additional effects on it inside the same vst host. The same thing you can do using Cubase or any other sequencer supporting vst standard.

You have to be sure that these plugins sends and receive midi CC - todays probably all do that. Another thing is to have midi chart for that specific plugin you wanna use. It will help a lot if not LEARN function there available. I would also separate keyboards and control surface. In this case you can use some old keyboard or other synthesizer with own keybord at the moment staying silent. That control surface could be a box with few drawbar pots and few buttons. To connect it together you will need that midi merger or something like that which is lying somewhere around in ucapps.de website. That control device could be made using some old uC like 8051. I even have working similar device but i use it as 8 channel level control in CUBASE + 8 buttons + 8 leds. Unfortunately it doesnt receive any CC but thats not important here because anytime i switch it on then all buttons are in ON position + leds are lit ON too; all potentiometers are sending last value. So you dont need to be afraid that you do not remember setups. Other hand its little pain when you wanna use previously saved presets in your vst plugin then pots dont shows appropriate value anymore - you have to move each one. This circuit also use ADC08 (8 in) which may be impossible to find or not easy;)

To use 2 keyboards just add another. Its possible to use them by one midi cable - to Midi In of keyboard 1 from MIdi Out of keyboard 2 then Midi Out keyboard 2 to Midi In of your midi interface. Also somewhere you have to add this control unit as i described previously. In this type of connection you will not need miei merger - i think.

 

I dont know your location but it can be cheapest way to get midi keyboard - you may buy old for example: Yamaha PSR-640 etc. Ive bought one of old Yamahas for 5 british pounds and probably FATAR keyboard inside because once Yamaha said that FATAR is producing them for Yamaha. So if you move - you may leave it for someone next:) 

Cheers

C_04   

Edited by C_04
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Hi Philip,

 

it shouldn't be a big deal to do this. For me it's more complicated and time consuming to build the case :)

Anyway: If you want velocity, you should go and use the KB-app and not the MB_NG. I tried both and with NG the velocity resolution is pretty low. So I just get maybe 10 or 15 different velocitys instead of 127. That has something to do with the scan speed. KB scans a lot faster.

 

With that said you need a second core that handles the controllers. 

You should also check, if your drawbars are really potentiometers. I have two sets of drawbars here and both are switches! In my case I needed to connect the drawbars and the busbar in a switch-matrix. But this works really fine. 

 

Good luck with your project and keep it up! It indeed makes fun ;)

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What configuration would you suggest to use with Midibox? NG? KB? Is this doable with midi box? What is STM32F4 support state?

 

Hi Philip,

 

It depends on whether you want to have two cores or one. The best approach as FantomXR said would be to have one core running MIDIbox KB just scanning the keyboards (true 128 velocities, ~5kHz) and another running MIDIbox NG doing all the other controls. You could have the MIDIbox KB core connected to the MIDIbox NG core via MIDI and set up all the handling in your MIDIbox NG config file. STM32F4 should be pretty well supported by now--it's the new big thing--and it has very nice performance. However, if you don't want to have two cores, you can have one MIDIbox NG core, but the keyboard action will be lower resolution. In either case, definitely doable with MIDIbox; MIDIbox NG plays nicely with DAWs and its behavior is very well customizable.

 

Of course none of this will produce sounds, just MIDI data, so you need some VSTi to run in your DAW to emulate the tonewheels.

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