Vintage Synth Repair

On Monday 14 April 2008 16:48, hermine wrote:
> > > I am at his website and looking for the reference to Hammond
> > > Oil....
> >
> >Would that be on this page here:
> >
> ><http://www.sl-prokeys.com/prokeys/generator.htm>http://www.sl-prokeys.com
> >/prokeys/generator.htm
>
> Yes. but since for better or for worse, i think of the Hammond as if
> it were a kind of musical pre 1967 Volkswagen bus, on which I have
> done MUCH work, the notion of purging the oil seems OK to me, and the
> way we do this with a vw is to buy tons of cheap oil, change the oil,
> run the motor for a minute, CHANGE the oil again, and repeat this
> process until only clean oil comes out. we use the same viscosity,
> not something lighter, so as to cushion the engine against excessive
> wear from all the suspended CRAP in the oil coming into intimate
> contact with the metal. It has been ages since I had to do this,
> because i keep my cars very clean inside and out.

Well,  there might've been a bit of it dripping out the bottom by the time I 
was done...   :-)

> >?
> >
> >I can see the point of what he's saying there up to an extent, but no way
> >would I believe that dirt particles are going to get carried along what he
> >calls wicks and into the bearings. What I have found to have happened, on
> >some occasions, is that the old oil, particularly in units that aren't
> >played much, tends to let its lighter fractions evaporate and what's left
> >_is_ kinda gummy.
>
> yes, the car folks call this varnish, which it really is not, but i get the
> picture.... 

I don't know what that stuff is made out of,  offhand.  Wikipedia is not 
helping me here.  :-)

> > I did a service call some years ago,  I found that I could turn the shaft
> > of the generator by hand, with some effort. So I added some oil, and
> > turned it, and added some more, and turned it, and continued this way for
> > a while, and eventually it got to the point where the gummy residue was
> > sufficiently duluted by fresh oil that I was able to hit the switch and
> > it'd start and run normally.
>
> Yes, this is like the purge oil engine cleaning....
>
> >I notice too that he seems to not mention what he's using there.
>
> I never asked. I know that the oil for Omega watches at one time was
> exceedingly expensive per ounce, like Bulgarian Attar of Roses (the active
> ingredient in Joy Perfume) but there are many lightweight oils around,

I've never reallly looked into that much,  so far.

> and i never asked what oil he was using. because i had not gotten that far,
> since i own my Hammonds for only about three weeks.  And was starting from
> ground zero and did not want to get anyone so angry at me that i felt I
> could never speak again to the person without being blinded by fury! perhaps
> you know what i mean..... 

I don't bite.  :-)

> > > in the same general vicinity he talks about a material used in sealing
> > > the machinery in later Hammonds, which crumbles with time and makes a
> > > terrible mess, and I sure hope I do not encounter this stuff when I get
> > > into opening my T 211-1 to remove its Leslie and take it to the fixit
> > > guy. 
> >
> >Would that be this page here:
> >
> ><http://www.sl-prokeys.com/prokeys/manual.htm>http://www.sl-prokeys.com/pr
> >okeys/manual.htm
>
> Yes. I found this terrifying since i have not done a motor tear down for 12
> years, a tiny Fiat Multipla it was, and i wound up cleaning it on the
> kitchen counter with toothbrushes... 

Heh.

> >?
> >
> >I encountered some of that deteriorated foam while working on my car
> >recently, in the dashboard!
>
> OH NO! THAT STUFF! i have an ancient truck, MUNGO THE TRUCK OF DEATH
> whose dash is backed up by this material and I believe Mungo was born
> in the same year as my T-211-1 hammond! like breadcrumbs from HELL!

:-)

I forget where else I ran across a reference to it recently.  Somewhere...  If 
I come across it again I'll see what they have to say about removing it.  I 
agree with what he's saying there about how felt works better for some stuff.

BTW,  if you ever have to glue felt in place,  "SOBO" glue is good stuff to 
use,  it won't soak into the felt.

> > I've also seen it in other places as well. That bit about the broken
> > resistance wire is a nasty problem, and I don't like having to deal with
> > that, but weeks? Nah. I had a spinet once that belonged to a "cat lady"
> > that suffered some damage in that area. It wasn't gonna take me _weeks_ to
> > trace through. That was a pretty nasty situation too. 
>
> I was a cat lady for a while, but whereas I did not have free for all cat
> piss in the house, I KNOW WHAT YOU MEAN. I knew other cat people, (my eyes
> water from the memory of the aromas) and cat pee given enough time, will
> cause almost anything to rot, i believe) 

This lady eventually had a local animal rescue operation named after her...

Had to move several times because things kept getting out of hand with how 
many there were.  When I went out there the organ was sitting out on the 
porch!  Also an old reed organ,  but I let somebody else deal with that.

> > <http://www.sl-prokeys.com/prokeys/pro.htm>http://www.sl-prokeys.com/prok
> > eys/pro.htm
> >
> > > this is where you start to look around, the website is huge, and you
> > > probably already know who he is, right?
> >
> > Nope, never heard of the guy. But that's no surprise. I worked on organs a
> > bunch, starting in 1975 and stopping maybe 10-12 years later, when things
> > had tapered off pretty much. But there are an awful lot of people out
> > there who deal with this stuff, no surprise that I've never heard of him.
>
> Somehow I think if I know somebody EVERYBODY else knows them, and
> often it is true because the world is a small place.

It amazes me sometimes how you can bump into people,  but it also amazes me 
sometimes how many different people I'm carryng on continuous conversations 
with in this medium,  on all sorts of subjects. And I've cut down on the 
number of mailing lists and groups and such,  it's way less than it used to 
be a couple years ago.

> >So what's the problem with the Leslie?
>
> It came to me having been turned off for  reasons unknown  and the
> last person who worked on it years ago said he does not remember WHY
> he turned it off. he referred me to a nearby fixit lad, who said
> sure, take the leslie OUT and bring it in. he also said they are not
> making them any more so the parts are you know, impossible to find,
> but as an ancient car fixit woman, I take this as a challenge since i
> have stockpiled many parts for cars which are no longer made, most of
> which i found in under  seven minutes.

Some parts might be a little difficult to find,  but not impossible.  They're 
all out there somewhere.

> But I know my way around certain car parts and NOTHING about Hammond organ
> parts. I do know that i must have the leslie or another leslie which
> FUNCTIONS because i cannot bear to have something which has non-functioning
> parts. I can play the thing without the Leslie, but, knowing that it is
> there and not working is eating a hole in my head.

Well what's it not doing?  Does the sound come through it at all?  Does the 
stuff that's supposed to rotate do so?

> I also have a spinet, the cheap one with woodgrain formica on it, and
> as much as I loathe woodgrain formica, this is a pleasing instrument
> to me.  model 136124  apparently the last three letters tell us this
> is the grain of the fake wood.  it is not 136J24 which at first was
> very confusing to me when I was trying to get its manual book...

I have some manuals here,  I'll have to have a look.

> i have almost no keyboard experience, i am a classic guitarist in my
> heart, and had a pianist mother. this is my first foray into keyboards.
> But i am a born natural fixer of things....and have restored things
> other than cars and musical instruments professionally.

Cool.  Let's kick this around some more,  and see what we can figure out.

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin