Leslie 122A Leslie ORGAN CAB RESTORED W/OC3 cab. Restored/modded 1960/2015 - Walnut

Video below. You have to hear this! Outside, no less!

It was cold and my fingers couldn't play this day, but do you hear that Reverb in the background? That's the sound of that Leslie bouncing off distant houses. Yeah it really is that loud actually!

I hate to say it, but it sounds a lot like the rock organ setting on my old Roland. Which I always thought sounded so fake! But here it is. I have those guys and apology LOL

I got this newer 122A Leslie cabinet a short time ago in a repair at a church where I replaced their current cabinet which was this one. I took it back to the shop and repaired it, did some finish repairs and knowing these particular cabinets have a few quirks about them I set about repairing those and correcting the quirks.

They use a couple of zener diodes as voltage regulators and instead of replacing those and leaving that to chance again, as most techs are, I simply bit the bullet and replaced it with a oc3 tube, as the old ones have.

In all my years of fixing Hammonds and Leslie's I've never had a bad OC3 tube, or really even a problem with voltage regulation, but when I get these for repairs, inevitably it's all about these zener diodes that they replaced the oc3 with.

I can't imagine why they would decide to do that after such a perfect record, on an unproven circuit that never been tried before on a high voltage tube amp, but I guess it was a cost cutting option. So drilling a hole, installing a tube socket, rewiring the circuit and replacing that with the oc3 has always been the only real solution for this problem. If I were a Hammond player or a church I wouldn't buy a 122a without this modification because it's simply a problem not only waiting to happen but certainly going to.

BUT, if that is done, and in this case, an old style big cap can secreted underneath, that new amp really shines and blows the doors off of anything short of a completely rebuilt original! And I hate to admit it, but it might still be a little cleaner and a little louder!

Everything else about these things is pretty reliable, and a new cabinet with an original style amp otherwise, it really sounds incredibly good. I would say even stellar! I did do some other small mods and some corrections to make this more reliable for the next owner, but I don't see any reason why this shouldn't last as long as another 122, and of course this has a very robust and Loud tube amplifier, it seems a bit louder than the original and has a really nice bass quality.

It also has the newer servo motors in it, which are both reliable and give it that extra bit of real class as you hear the Leslie ramp up vibrato speed more gradually, as well as slow down more gradually. It's a very nice sound, that if you've heard 100s of leslies, you come to appreciate as the ideal state to hear these in. The sudden change of the older motors from Fast to slow isn't bad, but the ramping up and slowing down is an effect that was desired, but ultimately never achieved originally, as the motors were chosen for longevity, at which they did succeed.

There were some problems with the motor boards and the motors themselves early on, but this isn't one of those, and one of the biggest reasons that they had problems with the motherboard was guess what? Those stupid zeners!

The cabinet is made from some plywood and and particle board, but the heaviness and density of the particle board does make a more efficient bass cabinet, albeit with less resonance on the outside, it has a very tight bass sound and is probably the more attractive sounding of the two when it comes to overall sound quality.

If I had to fault anything it would be the change of high frequency horn on them, though it's rather negligible in churches. For overdriven Leslie sound in a rock band I would go for the original jensen, but this is actually a very respectable and loud and crisp high frequency horn as you can hear from the sample done on a nice looking C2.

This is an auction for the Leslie just to make that straight and this is a sample of that in the video, after the work I did and it is guaranteed for 90 days. Not that big of a chance I'm taking, because it's likely going to last for several years to come without any issues. Thanks for looking!