Hello Rich,

I restored an old Hammond organ. These generate the tones in a similar
manner. A motor (plus a start motor) and over a hundred pickup coils on
the long secondary shaft. 20 hours of hard work got it going again but
we have accepted the fact that some of the bearings are pretty much over
the hill. So it needs 2-3 starts to coax it to run without that mild
screeching in the background. Getting spare parts from a company that
went out of business 30 years ago just isn't going to happen.

So, put the cam thingie on some sort of spindle, with some kind of
depth gauge thingie, (maybe a slide pot and a stick), and map the
disks, and just make the same waveform from ROM?


That has been tried many times. Several rather expensive electronic
organs have come out claiming to emulate a Hammond. So far the real
enthusiasts do anything to get their hands on the real thing, knowing
that there will come a day when the last one croaks. IIRC it was Paul
Shaffer (the guy who makes the music at david Letterman's show) who
spent the equivalent of a luxury car to have one restored.

Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com