Welcome to Hammond For Hire

My name is Nick and I’ve been a Hammond organ player for three quarters of my life.

I’m based in the British Midlands and am fascinated and/or obsessed (depending upon your viewpoint) by all things Hammond. Over the last three decades, I’ve worked my way up through many of the best organ clones such as Yamaha SKs and Hammond XBs to arrive at my current setup of a Hammond XK-Pro rig for touring and a 1960 Hammond C3 organ for recording. I use these with either a Leslie 122 or 145, a Leslie pedal or a NEO Ventilator, depending on the need.

Over the year’s I’ve picked up a few tips on choosing, buying, restoring, gigging and recording these incredible instruments. This website gives me the opportunity to share a few of these and help keep the Hammond Organ sound alive for the next generation of players.

A Little History

This site began back in 2008 when I was looking around for a new musical challenge; hence the “Hammond For Hire” name. Today I’m the organ player for a 1960’s live act called The Quik Beats and am out gigging most weeks. We aim for that real, authentic vibe and the goal is to see how close we can get to the sound, look and feel of the original artists. That’s why for me, there’s no substitute for Hammond. I also take on the odd bit of session work when I can fit it around our schedule and even the occasional one-off live dep if its too good to pass on.

Over the years I have been lucky enough to play in lots of great bands, visited some incredible venues and even been booked to support some of my heroes such as Ian Dury’s Blockheads, Focus, The Pretty Things, Roy Wood, Slim Chance and Secret Affair. I’ve bumped into various members of Black Sabbath, UFO, Fairport Convention and Jethro Tull along the way too … and all thanks to the the fact that as a kid, I inherited a ropey Bontempi organ and discovered Deep Purple in the same month.