Farfisa Compact Duo low signal problem
2003-10-02 by William J. Spiropoulos
Hey all Just joined the group here. I have several old keyboards that might benefit from some advice from you all, but I'll start off with my Compact Duo. I finally received a replacement 7-pin Amphenol plug in the mail yesterday--my Duo has been sitting inert for some time because the old plug was shot--and after a little bit of fiddling was delighted to hear that it still worked. It actually worked a bit better than it used to because the old plug had a crappy and incomplete wiring job. The pinout I'd figured out was as follows, for those interested: pin# color function 1 braided shields ground 2 black ground? 3 pink (shielded) main audio 4 red 9VDC for organ 5 black (shielded) switched audio out to reverb unit 6 nc nc 7 9VAC red keyboard-split indicator lamps At first I'd hooked up the reverb and main backwards...in addition to funky interaction between the organ and the accessory FA/R box, the signal was way, way down. Reversing them made everything work correctly. It was great to have most if not all the tabs more or less doing what they were supposed to do. Except for the fact that the overall volume level of the organ is still WAY below what I would expect it to be. The inherent noise from the FA/R is quite prominent compared to the organ signal, and I have to turn it (and the noise) way up for it to generate an marginally acceptable signal. Either something in the organ is blocking much of the signal from getting to the FA/R or there is something funky in the FA/R itself. I doubt the latter because running other stuff through the external input isn't nearly as bad. To make matters even worse, certain combinations of tabs seem to affect the overall volume level of the organ. The yellow main tabs for the upper manual seem to make the quietest signal, even when all are on; the green "boost" tab section make for a somewhat louder sound (although I doubt this is what they meant by "boost" in this case!). What's goofy is that activating the Tremolo/Repeat/Percussion section makes the overall signal considerably louder, even when only the Tremolo tab is depressed and thus doesn't actually apply any tremolo. Even so, it isn't enough to bring the signal up where it should be. I know this is an old old organ, but I wouldn't expect it to sound like it was coming over a shortwave radio, and certainly not to crank the FA/R--well as the input gain on my multitrack--up all the way in order to get an acceptable signal level. I can't believe that Farfisa would intentionally design an organ with such poor audio specs; people still use them on pop records in the digital age, for chrissakes, so I can imagine that a properly functioning Duo would sound reasonably loud, crisp and clear. I assume that there IS in fact a problem somewhere in the organ or the FA/R. And hopefully it's one that can be fixed reasonably easy (and hopefully cheap!). In a nutshell: The actual audio producing circuitry seems to buzzing along just fine. But something seems to be getting in the way of it and pushes it down in level far enough to mingle with the FA/R's inherent noise. Also, volume levels change depending on which tab sections are in use. Any advice from the pros or better-informed amateurs would be appreciated, devoured, and put to good use instantly. That's where I'm at at the moment. However I'm still ecstatic to have the Duo making ANY kind of noise right now! Zowie! So I'm not letting this little tech problem get in MY way. :-) thx Billy S.