Hammond organ

The Hammond organ is an electric organ which was designed and built by Laurens Hammond around 1934. While the Hammond organ was originally sold to churches as a lower-cost alternative to the pipe organ, it came to be used for jazz, blues, and then to a greater extent in rock music (in the 1960s and 1970s) and gospel music. In the 1990s and 2000s, a variety digital clonewheel organs and emulation devices became available, which reproduce the Hammond sound. Despite the much lower cost and increased reliability of these electronic clones, there is still a strong interest in vintage Hammond organs. Although the last electromechanical Hammond organ came off the assembly line in the mid-1970s, it is a testament to their design and construction that thousands are still in daily use.