Organ Recording

As you may remember (and if you don’t I have a little post about it right here) I purchased a Conn organ and Leslie cabinet for cheap. I’ve been working on a song of mine recently and my brother pushed me to record an organ part for the song using this newly acquired piece of furniture or organ as some may refer to it. So, I did and while doing so I began to realize that this might be interesting to some out there as to how I went about recording the silly thing.

I did a little research online and came across many theories as to the best way to record a Leslie cab. Originally I put one SM57 on the top cone and one Beta 52a on the bottom woofer.  It turned out pretty good. Then I was informed by my brother that to really capture that rotating cone on the Leslie, one has to use two SM57s on either side of the cab, recorded to a stereo track and that will capture that ear to ear tremolo on a recording.

Well, I thought to myself, I must try this again. I did and must say that it turned out way better than the original recording. It was very easy to setup and get levels as well. The sad thing is that my speaker after this recording began to spew out some distorted hiss sounds that, upon reading my vintage manual I bought on eBay, appears to be related to some bad tubes. Now, this organ has 80 12AU7 tubes. Yes, you read that correctly, 80.  These little tubes only run $7 or so, but take that times 80 and we have a bit of a financial problem. Thanks to the manual I ran a test and found that I have only 20 that need to be changed. Whew! But, I’ll change these bad boys out and we’ll see if that corrects the distortion.

As for now, let me show you my method via pictures and let you hear the result via mp3.

The organ chamber. Our little kitchen nook turned out to be quite the organ recording room. Who would’a guessed?
This was my original recording method. 1 SM57 on top and 1 Beta 52A on bottom.
This is the method I ended up liking best. 2 SM57 mics on top and 1 Beta 52A on bottom. This really captured the rotating horn tremolo effect that Leslie’s are known for.

 

And now for the audio:

 

That’s all for now.

Till next time….

David (Cali Dingo)

 

 

 

 

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