It was time in my test plan to configure the general midi (GM) synthesizer module that resides in my Classic controller. I had remembered to route an audio cable from the interior of the controller box when I put the back on the console. In order to use the same stereo channel for Hauptwerk, Key Rig (see below), and the GM Synth, I used "AU Lab", which comes as part of the Mac operating system. Au Lab allows you to connect many audio programs together and provides a mixer and effects (which I am not using, by the way). I configured AU Lab to accept the line input to eh Mac as one of the inputs to be mixed. I then wired the GM Synth's audio cable to the Mac's line input jack. I turned on the organ and enabled the GM stops - and I heard nothing! In case I did not understand Au Lab, I tried sending a known input to the line in and it worked perfectly. The GM synth was not working. I took the back (actually only one section of it) off the console and opened the controller box. I discovered there was no GM synthesizer there!

There used to be one - and I had played it before. Then I recalled that I had to replace the mother board in the controller box a while ago and I probably hadn't tried the GM synth since then. I must have shipped the synth back to classic with the old mother board! A quick email to Classic confirmed this and they shipped a new synth board to be the next day. It arrived last today and I plugged it into the mother board - and still I had no signal. However, when I looked through the block diagrams that Classic had shipped me with the controller, I discovered there was a jumper on the mother board that had to be repositioned to route the MIDI signal to the GM board. I moved the jumper and I had synth sounds again!

While the console was open, I fixed the only remaining problem I had found through my testing - two reversible pistons on the solo for which the piston light was not working. Both these problems were caused by my having placed connectors improperly on the side of the controller. I had used old photos of the controller to place them this way - and I must have changed their position to make them work! I too this photo of the controller to document the correct positions.

The last sep it getting the supporting software exactly the way I wanted it was to "enclose the piano." This meant wiring it to the percussion chamber expression pedal. This is not so simple. If you wire it according the HW instructions, by using the output defined in the continuous controller menu for that expression pedal, then you get a midi controller signal that goes from 0 to 127. Unfortunately, this means the piano sound goes completely silent when the chamber is closed - which is very unrealistic! Instead, I defined the expression pedal output on a new virtual midi channel and used MidiPipe (shareware for the Mac) to filter the midi data and send a new volume output to Key Rig. Here you can see the critical piece of this, a filter that rescales the 0-127 data to be 32-127 data. I settled on 32 by trial and error. With things set this way, the piano expresses about the same amount as the other tuned percussions.

All is now completed except the console top and speaker cabinets, which Bruno Legarce should deliver very soon.

The first thing you will notice is that this web page has a new look. Since this is really a blog about the organ project, I have recast the page into a more blog-like format. From now on, entries will be in reverse chronological order, starting with the latest news. Only the latest entry will be open as text. You can selectively open and close each item as you wish. This should also help the page load faster.

As far as the organ project goes, I spent the last couple of days replacing the key on-off switch with a smaller toggle switch. This had to be done because the control drawer is now mounted higher up - with a much smaller gap under the console shelf. The key was simply too tall and I know I would have forgotten about it after a session of practice and then jammed it into the nice Bruno-finished shell! Since the toggle switch required a much thinner mounting platform, I had to fashion a metal plate I decided to affix the reit rate control to this as well. This will give a more unified look to the drawer panel. Here you see the sheet of 12' square black anodized aluminum that I bought on line for about $15. I have already hacksawed the small panel I need. The rest goes back in the workshop for future projects.

Here is the latest design I have for second touch. The primary contact is simply the existing crank contact on the back of the keyboard. The second touch springs are mounted to the aluminum angle that is in turn secured to the keyboard pivot block. In order to pretension the springs, I have secured an aluminum rail to the forward ridge of the keyboard stop block as shown. I have increased the thickness of the felt spacer that sits on the screw that in turn defines the key throw. I have placed felt on the upper side on the 2nd touch springs so they do not click when struck by the key screws nor when the springs snap back to the rail.

This design assumes use of the Peterson underkey contact assembly, shown at the bottom of the diagram. This assembly is mounted so the 2nd touch springs engage the Peterson contacts. Hence, there is no way to accidentally "fire" a 2nd touch contact. The springs must move before a 2nd touch note can play.

I corresponded with Scott Peterson. Scott has provided much help to me during this project. He graciously offered to send me a set of under-key contacts that I can return within 30 days if I cannot make them work in this configuration. This complicated my testing slightly because I had to come up with novel ways of mounting the contacts that did not damage them in any way! It took two evenings of thinking - with Karen's assistance - before I settled on a method that would hold the contact assembly securely in the right position (or at least close enough for testing) and not modify the Peterson parts in any way. First I had to verify that I could affix some metal brackets to the bottoms of the key cheeks. Since the console is out for refinishing, I had to search my extensive photo library to verify I could do this and still fit the keyboard into the console.

I mounted small metal angles on the two key cheeks. These in turn attach to the two metal angles that came with the Peterson assembly. I turned the Peterson angles upside down and also used a stack of nuts as spacers so that the Peterson metal channel is suspended approximately the right distance below (above in the photo since the keyboard is upside down) the 2nd touch springs.

The small circuit board visible on the right is the Peterson pedal contact circuit card - see below.

In addition to finding a non-destructive way to mount the contacts, I also had to find a non-destructive way to test them. The Peterson contacts come with a cable that, unfortunately for me, is not compatible with the MasCon connectors I use. Hence I could not simply connect these to my test keyboard. Instead, I went back to the pedalboard and disconnected its Peterson circuit card. This card has two purposes. It serves as a junction for a removable cable linking the pedalboard to the console. It also contains an array of LEDs that are used to test the pedal contacts. There is no reason the same LEDs can't be used to test the keyboard contacts, since they take the same connectors! I can only test a couple octaves of the key contacts at a time - but that is a minor inconvenience. Here you can see me depressing two keys into their 2nd touch region. You can also see the two corresponding LEDs lighting on the circuit board.

I will do a bit more testing before deciding to buy the contacts (I place that probability at 90% today). Then I will need to mount them a bit better and come up with a cover to protect them from knees.

I purchased bigger angle stock. The next largest size required the angle to reach one full inch toward the keys. Karen and I carefully measured this and decided it would work. Here you see the new angle stock, drilled and ready for the springs. The old assembly is shown next to it for comparison. The large angle had two advantages. First, the larger, 1" depth provided increased resistance to bowing. Second, the increased depth (2") allowed me to secure the assembly to the wooden piece that holds the key pivots. This creased a much stronger mounting.

Here is the finished result. I am pressing two keys to the bottom of the primary throw and the middle key to the bottom of the second touch throw. The keyboard is fairly well adjusted. I ended up having to use two thicknesses of felt washers, with deeper ones toward the center of the keyboard.

The next step will be adding the remaining springs and then the contacts. I am now devoting my though toward how I will mount the contacts.

Karen and I are now working to secure someone to do the console refinishing and minor woodwork. I will report more on this in later posts. In the meantime, I decided to work a little on the speaker cabinets. I have two 1960s Rodgers speaker cabinets left over from my old Rodgers 32B organ. We sold two with the organ and kept two. One of these has been used in my house for the last 15 years as a display table in my living room. The other has served a similar purpose at my parents' house. I went to visit ,my Mother on Friday to celebrate my daughter passing the California Bar. After we returned from dinner. I emptied her speaker cabinet of its amplifiers and speaker cones. The later were affixed to a rear panel. I loaded these separately into my station wagon - so as not to have to carry a single unit that we too heavy. It was already heavy enough for Karen and I without the speakers and amplifier.

This morning, before Karen awoke, I did the same to our Rodgers cabinet. I carried it into the Family room. Karen was right about the finishes being quite different. I am not sure if they were always that way or if ours faded more because it was in a more sunlit room.

After Karen woke, she helped me rearrange the family room as you can see in this photo. Our fireplace is once again useable.

Here you can clearly see that the right hand speaker cabinet is darker. I will have the console and lighter speaker cabinet refinished to match the darker one.

The console is still sitting on carpet because it still needs glides added to sit directly on the wooden floor. The console and speakers will sit closer together after refinishing. The console will also sit about 8" closer to the wall.

Since the back panels of both cabinets are removed, I simply placed the JPL powered monitor speakers inside, facing the wall. The right hand cabinet contains the subwoofer in addition to right monitor. Although there is plenty of room inside for the computer as well, I am placing it atop the cabinet for now so I can get to it more easily. When I have a dedicated computer, it will live inside.

I had to use a hack saw to cut away metal from the bottoms of three of the new SAMs in order to make them fit. This was not as scary to do now that I know that this didn't hurt the SAMs the first time I did this. Still, it was a bit unsettling to mutilate these essentially brand new SAMs. With nine SAMs replaced, we moved the bolster back to the console. All but one SAM worked! The Solo octave coupler SAM would cancel but not turn on with its magnet. I verified that the magnets both worked and that the wiring was all correct. It had to be a mechanical problem. I noticed that if I held the tab 1/8 of the way down and pressed a piston, it would turn on the rest of the way. I decided that the stop tab angle must have been adjusted too far out of spec - which surprised me since I assumed the SAM would work for any amount of angular adjustment that was physically possible. This was not so - and I consider this a design flaw in the SAM. Karen helped me lift the bolster to a table in front of the console this afternoon. I remounted the last errant SAM about 1/16" higher on the bolster. We placed the bolster back in the console and now ALL THE SAMS WORK. All 165 SAMs are now working.

Now there are only three tasks remaining on the organ console project:

1) Refinish the console,
2) Install second touch on the accompaniment manual, and
3) Procure a dedicated computer for the console.

Task 3 is trivial and should be left until last so as to get the most computer for the same money. I will likely proceed with task 1), refinishing the console. However, first I intend to play the organ for a while!

Now that the organ actually plays, it is harder for me to take it apart to do any new work! Karen and I spent some time over the last few days shopping for the audio system. We visited several local music stores and finally placed an order for a pair of JBL LSR2328P powered studio monitors and a matching LSR2310SP powered sub woofer. These will be available to pick up in a couple weeks. I also built up the courage to remove the console top and continue fixing wiring problems with the SAMs. I used four memory levels on the capture system to map each stop tab to a piston so could make repeated SAM tests in arbitrary order. I determined that there were still 11 SAMs that were not working properly. However, four of these looked like easy wiring repair projects. Two pedal SAMs were "wired together" so that a piston set for one would turn both on. The cause was a short between the signal wires on the two SAMs - located on the left circuit board I had built for the bolster interconnections. I used a small file to clear the soldered short and the tabs were once again independent. A second pair of tabs in the Great were linked so that canceling the first one caused the second to turn on. This was due to a similar short - but this time in the magnet wires between the adjacent SAMs. Once more, a few strokes of the file solved the problem.

The SAM scorecard shown here lists the current status of all the SAMs on the console. Every SAM is "green" except for seven. Of these, only four are really "dead". The remaining three are "sticky". I have more than enough spare SAMs to replace all of these - so that is an upcoming project.

Last Wednesday, after an evening spent at my mother's house setting up her new high speed Internet, I returned home to find the new controller board from Classic on ,my doorstep. I carefully swapped out the board and began testing the organ once again. It took a couple evenings to connect everything up once again, carefully checking the functionality after each step. It was all working - modulo the few errant SAMs that I already had identified. By Saturday, I had a fully functional organ for the first time. Every stop and every control works. I programmed everything to Hauptwerk and even spent a little extra time rerouting the MIDI for the piano rank to an external software synthesizer. I now have the following items left to complete the project:

• Replace or repair the remaining errant SAMs
• Add the accompaniment second touch
• Refinish the console
• Procure a dedicated computer for running Hauptwerk
• Add a better audio system

I decided to progress first to the audio system. I invited Cory Edelman, an old friend who is also a theater organist and an audiophile, to visit. He played the organ for a while, as shown in the photo, and gave me some advise on audio components.

It is time for a new video clip of the organ in action. Still photos cannot convey the fact that the stops actually move and the notes actually play. Hence, I mounted my Nikon 3100 camera on a tripod and played a short piece, "Indiana Lullaby." The idea is to show off the functions of the organ .Click on this photo to run the video. It is in MOV format.

In the video clip you can clearly see the combination action working. I even use the sostenuto effect at the end. I am off to Washington yet again tomorrow so I will not be able to work on this again until next week.

On Wednesday, August 24, my father, Ralph Deutsch, passed away at the age of 91. He is the one responsible for my interest in the organ and the one who made sure that I had top notch organ teachers from the very beginning despite the fact that I had not previously studied piano. In addition to all the things he meant to me, my mother, and my sister, he was a successful mathematician, physicist, and inventor. He authored six technical books and held 147 U.S. Patents - so many that he became a patent agent in order to file them himself. He was the inventor of the first digital organ system that became the basis for the Allen Computer Organ that revolutionized the electronic organ industry in the late 1960s.

In order to make room in our home for the throngs of mourners who visited for food and religious services after the funeral last Friday, my daughter and I moved the theater organ to yet another new position.

I will be creating a web page to honor my father in the near future. In the meantime, we have suspended work on the theater organ until at least next week.

Update - Friday, September 9: I have posted most of the web tribute to my father. Click here or follow the new link in the banner on this site.

It has now been two years since the day we moved this theater organ console into our home. Today (or actually two days ago) we had a playable organ. I decided to record a tune on the organ before dismantling it to work on the bolster wiring. Here is "High Hat", a novelty tune by Louis Alter. He is much better known for composing "Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans?" However, "HIgh Hat" is pretty well-known in theater organ circles because the great organist Jesse Crawford made a recording of it when it was new. It is a difficult piece and demonstrates that I have successfully adjusted the keyboards!

When I decided to start this project, I gave myself a budget and schedule. So far, I am still under budget - but now that I have bought most of the controller, I am getting a lot closer to my cap! My schedule was to complete the project within two years. Clearly I am running late. Of course, much of the delay was caused by the controller not being ready when expected - resulting in a very slow year last year on the project. I am certainly happy with the progress since the controller was delivered - so I will press on.

Now, back to the bolster wiring. I calculated the amount of 26 gauge wire I needed to complete the console - about 6,000 feet. Since I didn't want to waste money buying wire in measly 100-foot rolls, I bout eight 1,000 rolls, 1,000 feet in each of the eight colors I use in my cables. However, I still wanted to use the dispenser I built for smaller rolls. Hence I needed a way to get wire off the 1,000-foot spools and onto something more manageable. Karen and I built a jig to do this. This photo shows a crank assembly into which we can clamp an empty small spool. We used a threaded rod and a crank made for window casings. The trick was using these two tapered washer/nuts. They clamp against the spools and hold them tight and centered on the rod.

Here is the controller. It is getting pretty crowded with connectors! When it is more complete, I will neaten things up with more cable ties.

I will complete the lower circuit board for the left side connectors and then move on to wiring the corresponding SAMs. In a few weeks, I should have some stop tabs working.

Here is said console controller - getting full of cables. All the cables on the main panel have to exit to the right so that the controller can hinge open for servicing. I wired up each keyboard first. I discovered that the accompaniment keyboard has many stuck and intermittent notes. It is unusable for the moment, so I disconnected its voltage line to keep it from playing until I can take the organ apart and work on it. The Great and Solo keyboards were much better. Each has a few sticky keys - but they basically work.

I used a special feature of the controller that allows one to test the pistons and toe studs without having them try to fire off the SAMs. After verifying that each works and is wired correctly, I moved these cables from the piston section of the controller to the stop section In this way, they will generate MIDI signals I can use to connect to Hauptwerk's own combination action. My stops wont move but I can change registrations a bit.

I wired up the four expression pedals (including the crescendo). The crescendo works for a few minutes and then stopped completely. I discovered that the Klann potentiometer rack I had installed actually cut one of the wires when it moved! I repaired the wire and then cable tied it to a safer place.

This has been a very busy weekend. I was in Washington DC on Wednesday when the shipment arrived from Classic Organ Works with all the console controller components. I flew back to Los Angeles on Thursday but I went straight to UCLA with my daughter to see a musical. I did not see the box from Classic until almost midnight.

I woke early on Friday and unpacked the box. Here you can see the various units. The tall green box is the console controller itself. The low gray box with electrical outlets is the AC Controller. The Black box to the front eight is actually not from Classic - it is a five-port MIDI interface I purchased last week from MOTU.

The notebook is full of documentation. I'll have to read it soon.

That was all I could do today because ,my daughter, Erica, was graduating from Pepperdine Law School. I had to leave to go to the commencement exercises, followed by various social get-togethers.

I found just enough spare time in the afternoon to place the AC COntrol Unit in the console and wire it up to the key switch and console lights. I can now turn on the switch and see the console light up.

Now it is Saturday and I can finally concentrate on the controller. I skimmed the documentation, paying careful attention to the various block diagrams and cabling descriptions. I set up everything on the table in my "lab" where I could reach things more easily than in the console. Karen helped me move the pedalboard into the lab. Since I installed new Peterson contacts on the pedals, I knew these would work well and make a good test platform.

Here you see how I cabled the pedalboard to the controller. You can also see the cables from the "CRTL-3", a numeric keypad with character display that will be used to control the Classic system. Finally, I build an ersatz stop tab by wiring a small MASCON connector to a handy +12V terminal on the controller. I can use this to turn stops "on" for testing.

I connected the giant 70W Astron power supply to the controller and turned it on. At first, things behaved strangely. I wrote an email message to Classic with questions - but I also studied things much more carefully and discovered that several cables were attached backwards. I had taken a description in the documentation too literally, I suppose. In ay case, I traced the wires back from their connectors on the interior of the controller and found the error. With the cables now in properly, I turned on the system again.

Here you see the CRTL-3 unit responding properly.

That was quite enough for Saturday. I woke Sunday and began mounting the Classic components in the organ console. I chose to place the Controller on the low-note side of the console so that I could still swing it open to access the interior for servicing. There is plenty of room to reach all the pins. I mounted the AC Control Unit underneath so that the power cord can exit the console easily. I mounted the MIDI interface and Classic MIDI terminal box ion the high-note side to allow easy access to a computer set up to the right of the organist. The Astron power supply is directly underneath.

I replaced the pedalboard and hooked everything together.

Erica, our new Juris Doctor, testing the organ for me. She turned on the key switch and played the pedals.

It is a but less than two years since I started this project. Now I can see a clear path to getting the organ fully functional. It will now take a lot of wiring and testing.

The control box from Classic will be coming with their AC Control Unit (ACCU). This is a box that manages all the AC power in the console. It allows a single on-off switch to control all the various individual power devices - including the SAM power supply, the console lights, the console controller (gray box), and amplifies. I have a problem: I do not have an on-off switch on the console! This should have been easy to remedy - just purchase one and install it. However, this was not actually trivial. All reasonable electrical switches are made to mount on either circuit boards or panels that are less than 1/4" thick. Every part of my console is made of wood at least 3/4" thick!

The solution is to bore out the reverse side of the wood to make a small area thin enough to accept a switch. With this in mind, I set off to purchase a key switch. I looked on line and found a a local electronics supply house with a good selection. I stopped by after work and discovered all the switches they had allowed the key to be removed only in the switch's "on" position! This would not work for me and I wonder why this is the norm. I purchased an SPDT switch that allowed the key to be removed in both positions. It had the longest threaded shank too - 3/4".

I had wanted to mount the switch on the bolster - but the thought of boring against the curved surface worried me. If I damaged the bolster I would have a hard time replacing it. I went to "plan B" and decided to mount the switch on the fall board. Here you can see how I created the bore on the reverse side of the board.

It has been a while since I have worked on the theater organ project. I have come to a point where I really need to wire up the console to its controller for the next steps. My plan has always been to use a controller from Classic Organ Works. They have a product that is a perfect match for projects like this in their catalog. Referred to by their engineers as the "gray box", this assembly takes inputs from all the keys, stops, and pistons on the console and provides the combination action and MIDI translation required to interface to an external computer for tone generation - including drivers for a huge number of SAMs. Before I started this project, I contacted Classic and ended up talking with Henry Wemekamp, the owner and president. Henry's idea was to use this theater organ project as a test case for next generation controller they were about to start developing. Unfortunately, various factors, including the economic recession, have delayed the work on the new system longer than any of us would have predicted back then.

Henry and his wife Norma were on vacation this week in the Los Angeles area and they visited Karen and I last night. Here is a photo of the two of us at the console. We had a great time sharing stories with one another about how we ended up working with organs - and also discussing the pros and cons of various types of digital cameras. We also agreed on a near-term course of action for the project. Classic will ship a current model of the controller so that I can move on with the project. Since the new model will be built in the same physical chassis and have the same pin connections to the organ controls, I will be able to switch easily to the new model when it is available.

By the way, Classic is now advertising for a software engineer who will be a key person on the controller design effort. If any reader is interested in this, please visit Classic's Job Openings site.

The overall result is excellent. Here is a photo of the console in the dark. The new solid state lights are providing all the illumination. The music rack provides plenty of light for reading sheet music. The stop rails are nicely lit (in large versions of these photos, you can read every stop name). The pedal light does a great job on everything beneath the lower manual.

The console looks great - but it still doesn't play anything! Hopefully that will be remedied soon.

I am still waiting for the "grey box." I decided to add a music rack because no organ is complete without one. The original music rack from the Artisan console is missing. Ken Rosen was nice enough to give be an old Rodgers music rack when I took the console. Ken has tons of organ parts lying around in his studio and I am very happy to have this one. The rack comes from an old Rodgers 33E so it is a more modern style than a typical theater organ rack – which suites this console completely.

I removed the outer cover and carried it to my work room. I placed removable blue tape over the center and the areas that would have to be drilled attaching the music rack brackets. I carefully measured all the positions for the holes and drilled them.

Here is the finished music rack in place. I still need to replace the old lighting in the rack with modern solid state bulbs. Since the rack lights shine both upward and downward, they will light most of the stop rail as well. I will only need to replace the outer two stop rail bulbs on either side of the underside of the horseshoe cover to complete the lighting for the upper portion of the console.

Any of you who have been to one of my ragtime piano concerts knows that I usually play from sheet music – unlike most performers. I explain to my audience that I do this "...because I can." Now I can do this on the theater organ, when it actually starts playing of course!

Actually, the electronics lesson comes first. One of the basic equations in electronics is known as "Ohm's Law." It states that V=IR where V is voltage, I is current, and R is resistance. Since each stop action magnet (SAM) on my console has a 30 ohm coil (R) and is driven at 12V, the amount of current each will draw is V/R = 0.4 Amps. Although each SAM has two of these magnets, only one will even be engaged at a time. Hence, the largest number of coils I will ever engage at once is the total number of SAMs, or 165. Therefore, the largest possible total current the combination action will draw is 165 x 0.4 = 66 Amps.

Here you can see the 70 Amp power supply I purchased for the organ. It is so powerful that I had to order it from a company that sells amateur radio transmitters! It weighs close to 50 pounds. Mine is in that box. I unpacked it once to verify it works. Then I packed it again to wait until I need it. SInce it is too heavy to unpack unnecessarily, I included a web photo of the unpacked unit! I will mount this inside the consol - but not until after the grey box is installed and everything else is working.

I want the finished console to look truly professional so I decided to add tags (labels) for the toe studs and expression pedals. I could have purchased these from Arndt - like I did for the labels I have already installed on the bolster. However, these lower tags do not have to look like Wurlitzer replicas. Many theater organs did not even have these.

I found several online sources for plastic tags like this. They care usually called "panel tags" because they are meant for labeling control panels on large electronics gear. Mine come from E. R. Perry Signs Engraving. They have an online order form. I specified the color, text,and size of each tags. I also added comments to define the font I wanted (their "normal" font") and the font size. Remember, these have to be readable from the oran bench. I chose 30 point which is the largest size that fits on the 1/2" tags I ordered.

The tags come by mail service in a few days. Mine cost about $4.00 apiece. Here is the bag of tags which arrived in a soft envelope.

I could not mount the expression shoe tags on the fall board because the Artisan console has a hinged drop-down board that sites about two inches in front of the fall board and extends to just over the swell shoe opening. Swell tags mounted on the fall board would not be visible from the organ bench because of this. Hence I decided to mount these tags on the drop-down board.

I taped some scrap paper on the lower edge of this board and carefully marked the positions of these four tags. I then drilled the holes for them, removed the paper, and screwed them into place.

Here is the console with the bench removed so you can see the newly-installed tags. It definitely adds to the finished look of the console - and may even help guest organists find their way around.

I corresponded with Classic Organ Works this week. They are making good progress on their new "grey box" and I may have mine in a month or so. The really good news is they will likely replace their old control panel (for which I would have had to build a drawer in the console) with a iPad! This is so cool..

Here is another little task that I had been putting off. Some of the early photographs of the console clearly showed an attribute of transparency! Since there is no back on the console (yet) light shines through the various openings and makes the think look quite hollow. The bolster slots used to be the biggest offender, but now that they are plugged with all those SAMs, they look fine. The opening for the four expression shoes was now the biggest problem. I decided to address this by building a baffle – a box that surrounds the shoes from the back. My Rodgers has such a baffle. These add to the finished look of a console.

I built my baffle from Masonite with a frame of 1"x1" lumber as shown here. The jag in the side piece fits around the wooden beam in the console to which the expression shoes are mounted.

One of the many suggestions that Arthur Crtichley of Classic made early on was that I should consider replacing the old Artisan pedal contact assembly with contacts that are mounted directly to the pedal board. Since the Classic "Grey Box" is still in construction, I had the time to finally consider this. I also took the time to order a 70 amp 12 volt regulated power supply from Astron. It will take a month to arrive but I'm in no hurry. I need 70 amps to drive all the SAMs - and the supply weighs close to 50 pounds! I will want to mount it on the floor of the console - space now occupied by the Artisan pedal contact assembly! All the more reason to replace the pedal contacts.

I did some research online and determined that Peterson Electro-Musical Products had the best sounding pedal contact system for retrofitting an existing AGO pedal board. I sent an email message to the contact address on their web site and Scott Peterson himself responded. Scott is the son of late company founder Richard Peterson, who invented (among other things) the Peterson Tuner which is the gold standard in the organ industry.

Scott showed a keen interest in my project and in helping me in any way he could. Perhaps it is because we are both sons of important organ inventors. We corresponded for a while and I sent him photos of the pedal board and manuals (I am still looking for an easier way to implement second touch). He actually asked one of his designers to help – before I had spent a dime. They sent me a full size drawing of a crosspiece to be mounted under the pedal keys. I transferred the drawing to a piece of foam board. Here you see Karen helping me fit it to the pedal board. I sent a modified drawing back to Scott indicating the changes needed to make it fit.

Our master bedroom rebuild is about three-quarters complete now. We are still waiting for the carpeting to be delivered and installed. In the meantime, the organ console is sitting in its new home in our family room - except for the bolster assembly which is still in the lab. The center of activity for the project has shifted to Toronto where the good folks at Classic Organ Works are assembling the "Grey Box" that will convert all the keys and stops to MIDI signals and provide the coupling and combination action. They have sent me a stack of wiring diagrams(actually its a folder of pdf files). I also managed to find some 16-pin MasCon connectors that I will use to wire the bolster.

I also attended the West Coast NAMM Show. I have done this every year for the last 35 years at least. I look forward to NAMM every year. I keep up with everything that is going on in the music industry. Since I play many instruments, its also a great opportunity to sample all the new products. Here you see me playing a contrabass flute from Jupiter (the company, not the planet.) It actually DOES play - though it takes so much air that you could pass out after eight measures!

I contacted Classic and discovered that Darryl Wood would be attending NAMM for them. I emailed Darryl and we met at the Rodgers exhibit area. He had his lovely fiancee with him. We talked for quite a while.

Here you see my daughter, Erica, and I trying out plastic clarinets. These instruments are entirely made from plastic - including the pads, springs, and reeds! They play (in C) but play a lot better if you substitute cane reeds. I also played some very nice new tubas from Kanstul. Their demonstrator, Howard Miyata, is a colleague of mine from the Dixieland festival circuit. We played jazz duets together for a while but I did not get a photo.

Here is the bolster assembly. All the knickknacks from our headboard are spending the repair period with the stop tabs. Since the organ console will be moved to our family room during the repairs, we may let it stay there afterward. I am sure the movers won't mind!

I will spend the next few weeks attempting to round up 25-pin MasCon connectors so I can wire the bolsters. At that point, I will be ready to connect to the Classic master computer - which I still need to purchase.

Here is my plan for adding second touch. The key movement is restricted in the top of its motion by a screw that sits in an inverted channel. I have been adjusting the key height using this screw. The basic idea for the second touch springs is that they engage this screw as it is pressed below the channel. I placed a board below the key block to hold the springs (there is only thin air at the moment where the springs should be attached!) The spring is adjusted to span the bottom of the channel. I loosened the screw so that more of the key motion would engage the spring. The first thing I noticed was a metallic click when the screw hit the spring. I eliminated this by placing a small piece of felt on the spring where the screw hits it. The result was not perfect, but I can see that it WILL work with a little more adjustment. I had to remove the test so that I could proceed with the key cheek routing.

I still need a way to pass the piston cables to the back of the keyboard assemblies. I planned to do this by routing a slot in the inner surface of the left key cheeks. However, my attempt to do this myself using a routing bit in my drill press failed. A friend of mine from work suggested I call Paul Graetinnger, a mutual friend. I contacted Paul a month or so ago and he agreed to help me with this. I had to wait until today to have a good time to visit him. Paul has a large wood shop behind his house with every kind of tool imaginable. He set up a router on work surface and helped me create the required slots.

Here you can see the accompaniment keyboard with the piston rail and cable installed. The cable emerges near the back of the key cheek. It then passes through a pair of slots I cut into the contact assembly and goes to the rear where it terminates in MasCon connectors. I repeated this for the other two manuals. It all worked great. I tested each one before mounting them in the console. I wanted to be sure things still fit together properly.

I discovered one minor problem. The "Set" piston (leftmost on the accompaniment manual) seams to have been pushed halfway out by pressure from the cable. I'll correct this the next time that keyboard is on my workbench.

Karen and I carefully carried the bolster assembly, still attached to the bolster support frame, into the bedroom and placed it on our bed. It is now a lot heavier than it has been due to the mass of 165 SAMs! We then slowly moved it from the frame to the console. Although we did this with no problem, it was very hard work and I will try to minimize the number of times we have to do this for the remainder of the project.

Notice that the bedroom does not look as nice as before. A few weeks ago, while I was playing at a jazz festival in San Diego, a hot water line burst in our master bathroom. Luckily, Karen was home and the leak was stopped in about 20 minutes. This was enough time to damage the lower part of the wall in three of our rooms as well as portions of the carpets, drapes, and wallpaper. You can see the carpet cut away to in the foreground. The drapes behind the console are at a contractor for repair so some old blankets are in their place on the French doors!

While waiting for the remaining 83 stop tabs to arrive from Bob Arndt, I returned to the piston rails. Now that I had the correct two terminal MasCon connectors, I assembled a cable for the pistons under the Great manual. No soldering was required! Technology progress is great. Here you see how it works. A common wire (-12V) passes through all the connectors while each piston adds a signal wire of its own to the cable. This makes 24 wires for the 23 pistons under the manual. However, one piston under each manual is lighted, requiring an additional two wires. That single four-terminal piston is serviced by two 2-terminal MasCon connectors that simply abut each other.

The wires are passed through a slot I routed into the left key cheek and then to the back of the keyboard where they terminate in four 8-terminal MasCon connectors. Unfortunately, the slot I created was not nearly deep enough and also needs to taper toward the read - something I cannot do with my drill press!

The Arndt stop tabs have arrived! They truly look great. I resorted both shipments into console order using the plastic packages in which they came.

When I started mounting the stop tabs in my SAMs I discovered that not all SAMs have the tongue holes in exactly the same place. I have three different batches of SAMs and each has a slightly different hole location. The three batches include the two I received from Ken plus the shipment I purchased on eBay. I did a quick accounting of the SAMs in each batch and found a way to place like SAMs in each row of each division. The spaced between the divisions will disguise the differences.

That's a lot of SAMs! 165 to be exact. It turns out that I accidentally counted some remaining damaged SAMs when I began this assembly - and I actually broke one SAM with an errant finger! Hence I am still seven SAMs short of a console (as they say.) I used some damaged SAMs to complete the sweeps anyway so I could be sure all the holes were drilled correctly.

Lucky for me, Willis Chase, the owner of Chase Organ Company in Lancaster, California, called me around this time to tell me he saw my "want to buy" add. He has 36 more Reisner SAMs that I can purchase. I will visit him next Saturday and buy the SAMs. This will give be enough to finish the console and have a good supply of spare SAMs. After all, the real test will come when I hook all of this to the combination action and see if the magnets will indeed move the tabs smoothly.

While I was waiting for my SAMs, extra connectors, and stop tablets, I decided to pull out the pedal contact box and add its wiring. I started by removing the chest magnets that were used to engage the individual contact bars on the old Artisan. There were twelve of these. Since they stuck up out of the box, I could now make the box a bit smaller, leaving additional room in the console for the Classic computer system. I purchased a 8' x 4' sheet of masonite for the task. I had the folks at Lowe's cut it down to the correct size, and also cut the remainder into small enough pieces to fit in my little Mercedes wagon.

I wired the pedal contacts in the same way I did the two manual keyboards. I had to reroute all the old wiring because, for some reason, someone had looped all the wires over the lip of the wood. These wires would be pinched between the contact assembly and the bottom of the console - not a good design.

Here you can see the toe stud wiring on the other side of the fall board. I wired the toe studs to MasCon connectors. I then plugged them into the Yamaha test keyboard and played the toe studs! I could even play them polyphonically!

We then repositioned the pedal board and I adjusted the interface between the pedals and the pedal contact box. I had to adjust some of the brackets that are on the ends of the pedals so that they had the correct high with respect to the contact cranks. When it all worked well enough, I fastened the pedal contact assembly to the bottom of the console with steal angles. Surprisingly I could find no evidence that the assembly had ever been secured to the console in the past! When we got it from Ken, the box was simply sitting on the bottom of the console.

A little additional work resulted in the completion of the contact wiring for the Great. I even used my router bit in my drill press to make a groove in one of the key cheeks through which I can route the wiring from the thumb pistons. However, when I went to assemble the wiring for this I discovered that the 2-terminal MasCon connectors I had received were incorrect. They were all terminating connectors rather than through connectors. Since I need to pass the common wire through all of the these, I was stuck. I was not able to convince Online Components that they had made the error since I had waited past their 21-day return period. Hence I simply ordered the correct part (as well as a lot more connectors) and went on to the Solo keyboard.

The Solo was a lot more work than the Great. For one thing, the keyboard needed a lot of adjusting. Also, many more contact wires were broken and many fewer had good wire leads. It took several evenings of careful soldering to get it all wired.

This photo shows how I used the old wire linkages (that used to go to magnets for actuating each row of contacts) to force several rows on contacts to be permanently engaged.

The company I chose to engrave the stop tabs was Arndt Organ Supply. I had read a lot of testimonials to the company on line and had gotten their catalog. I had not heard back from them for several days and my wife and I had gone to Sun Valley Idaho where I was performing in a large jazz festival. During the festival, Bob Arndt, the owner of the company, sent me a very nice email message. It turns out that he is also working on a large three manual theater organ for his own home and he is using the samples that I have chosen. He sent me a photo of his console under construction. It really makes a difference if you own a company that builds consoles! His is a work of art. In any case, he sent me his price list and I decided to have him build 82 of the 165 tabs I will need. The remaining 83 would come from the collection I obtained from Ken Rosen. I also ordered console tags from Arndt, the little labels that indicate the various divisions along the bolsters.

With the stop tabs under control, I turned my attention to the keyboards. I had originally planned to create long extension cables so that I could play the organ with a keyboard removed from the console. In this way I could adjust the contacts and action using sounds as my guide. Now I had a better idea. I used Craig's List (a suggestion from my son, Elliot) to find a very cheap 61-note MIDI keyboard for sale in my area. For $60 I purchased the Yamaha keyboard in this photo. It is almost new and works completely.

There was one problem, however. For whatever reason, Bob must have missed a diagram I sent that showed where the mounting holes should be drilled to match my existing stop tabs. In its absence, Bob used a standard location and it turned out the two were not the same. In the photo, I show one of my existing tabs (left) and one from Arndt (right) with the mounting holes lined up.

Bob and his company offered to replace all the tabs in the order. Rather than have him do this, we agreed that I would order the remaining 83 tabs so that they would all match completely. Bob even gave me a discount on the new order. Bob has demonstrated both a quality product and a high business ethic and I definitely recommend his company to others who are building or restoring organs. (I hear he is also a fine organist.)

I developed a new specification for the organ using 30 of the 35 ranks in Neil's 3-35 sample package. Of course, no 1920's era theater organs with only three manuals had as many as 30 ranks, so I had to draw my inspiration from large organs, more modern rebuilds, and other electronic organs. I sent my draft specification to several theater organists that I know and respect. What ensued was a nice little debate over the relative importance of various stops. I made two changes based on the email responses and I updated the specification on this web site.

Here is the jOrgan console I created for the new specification. I got it working with my Rodgers to try things out. It sounds great and I have all the sounds I think I will want. It is very nice to have the larger scale solo tibia, the style "D" trumpet, the better piano, and the vibraphone. I also now have a nice 32' diaphone to anchor the pedal.

In the "what else can go wrong" department, the "5" divisional piston on my Rodgers popped out and I now need to schedule a service call!

I had a great idea driving home from work one day. Ken had given me a small box of stop armatures without magnets. These are also Reisners and the tongues have the correct (steep) angle. Maybe I can transplant these tongues to some of the Reisner SAMs that have the shallow tongue angle? I used a small nail to hammer out the pin that holds in the two tongues. I then carefully moved the steep tongue to the SAM and hammers the pin back. It looked fine - but it did not move fine. Somehow, the act of removing and registering the pin created binding that caused the tongue to move with too much friction.

My solution was to go to Home Depot and buy a box of 1" #16 nails. I used these to make fresh pins for the tongues. I carefully bent the pointed end of each nail to keep the nails from falling out. The result looks a bit funky but truly works correctly.

Here you see a disassembled SAM awaiting the transplanted tongue.

Here you see another photo in the tongue transplant process. It shows the nail installed as the replacement hinge pin. I now have 29 SAMs. I also can take the seven remaining steep angle SAMs and transplant their tongues too, assuming I decide that is easier than repairing them. This will give me 36 SAMs -one more than enough for half of the top bolster. At this point, I will be completely our of workable SAMs in both angles so I will need to find 34 more to complete the project - and probably a few spares for ones that actually do not work after final assembly.

I also sent a request for quote to a company for engraving stop tabs. I decided that, if this is not too expensive, I should do this while I have the bolsters on the workbench. As I wait for the response, I will be away most of the next two weeks playing jazz with the Nightbloomers.

After I successfully repaired 38 SAMs I was feeling pretty good. I rewarded myself by purchasing the next eight ranks in the KeyMedia Connaisuer series. In return, I had to make these additional ranks fit on my current design using 165 SAMs (25 on the straight rail and 70 on the two bolsters.) The new ranks included four I really wanted: a krumet, a musette, a second tibia, and a second vox humana.

As usual, I designed a touch screen control display to test my new specification. It is shown at the right. I used my Rodgers to test the new specification. The funny little half-size tabs are my solution to not having enough SAMs. I took a trick from George Wright and placed an "alternate traps" tab in both the accompaniment and pedal. Then each tab controlling traps actually controls two, depending on the position of this shift key tab.

I am now going to be working a lot on the bolsters. Certainly it is good idea to take the bolsters out of the console and place them on a work bench. However, their odd shape makes this awkward. I had been doing this using a set of phone books to balance the bolster assembly. This would not do for the delicate SAM work I wanted to do now - using my precious repaired SAMs.

I bought a chop saw (I actually wanted to buy a new miter box, but the power saw cost only $50 more and the miter boxes I found looked rather flimsy) and its first use was to fabricate a bolster assembly stand. Here you see it, with the bolster assembly (minus the top rail) in place. I built it on a solid plywood base with felt feet so I can place it on a table. I also put two strong handles on the base so Karen and I could carry the bolsters between rooms. The stand holds everything in the correct orientation and gives me great access to the SAMs.

I played the 3-27 specification I designed using my Rodgers for a couple days and discovered a couple of minor deficiencies. In particular, the piano release samples were too abrupt and the vibraphone (which I really wanted to add) did not have controls for either the motor or the dampers. I emailed Neil Jensen and reported this. He responded very quickly and told me that he is working on an upgrade that will fix both of these. Then, one day later, he emailed me again saying he is sending me the 3-35 package (his complete organ samples) as a help to my project. The 3-35 organ has both of these corrected!

I was quite surprised and immediately emailed back by thanks to Neil. All I can say is that the samples have been top quality and Neil backs these with excellent response and service. All of this and he also plays a mean theater organ. Although I have not been to Australia in a number of years, I will definitely look him up on my next trip.

With the piston boards completed (albeit without any wiring - built that's the easy part) I turned my attentions back to the stop rails and those evil SAMs. Although I could order completely new Syndyne SAMs for this organ for just over $3,000, my wife thinks that's a bad idea. She wants me to have lots of fun spending lots of time on this project!

I have a box of correct-angle Reisner SAMs labeled "evil." The SAMs in this box do not work, for various reasons. However, the biggest problem seams to be magnet ground wires that have broken off from the armature. My previous attempts to simply solder the wires back to the armature failed because the armature is made of thick steel (it might be brass coated in something, I discovered later) and the magnet wires are very thin.

My new idea is to solder the broken wires to solder lugs. Finding solder lugs is a bit difficult since no one uses them anymore. However, I ordered a bunch online and found that Electronic City (a store in Burbank I frequented as a kid) is still in business and carries them.

Here you can see the ground wire from the left magnet soldered to a lug. This is still pretty delicate work.

I then drilled holes in the armature and fastened the lugs using small machine screws. I was careful to bend the lug so that the wiring would neither touch the moving parts of this SAM nor anything on the adjacent SAM after installation. The final step is a testing of both magnets using a test meter. I also test each of the switch contacts to be sure everything is working. The contacts are delicate and exposed - a poor combination. I know I'll have trouble with these later.

However, at least for now I have more good SAMs than I did yesterday! I have now repaired ten SAMs.

One of the things that made this project seam affordable was that my friend Ken had boxes of used Stop Action Magnets (SAMs) that came from old instruments. I did not notice until several weeks into this project that these SAMs, though all manufactured by the same vendor (Reisner) came in two different styles. Look at the photo on the right. The angle at which the metal tongue protrudes from the armature comes in two different angles. Only the steeper angle works in my console! However, Ken's SAMs were divided about equally between these styles. There were only about 70 working SAMs in the steeper angle. I would have to buy more with the correct angle or figure out some way to use the other style in the console. Hence, it was finally time to contact organ supply companies and order parts. Up to this time I had spent alost no money on this project.

I did some Internet searching and talked to a few people. I idendified the companies that had the parts I would need. There were two: Klann Organ Supplies and Organ Supply Industries. I emailed both companies, explaining both my background and my project, and after a week I called them. Both companies were very nice to me. Although they do not normally sell to individuals (since we might undercut one of their regular clients) they understood my unique situation.

Organ Supply was the first to send me prices on items I would need to purchase. It was then that I had some sticker shock. Even at wholesale prices, the SAMs I needed would cost be close to $5,000! It was then that I decided I would have another look at using the gradual-angle SAMs!

Here is what I have come up with so far. If I place a 0.5 cm shim (I used five small flat washers for the experiment) under the lower screw of the SAM, then the assembly is tilted forward enough to match the angle of the bottom tier SAMs with the steeper angles. The stop tab works fine in this configuration. I had to purchase some longer #4 screws for this, but that is fine. I'll need a lot more washers too. This tends, however, to push the top rail backward so I'll need to stiffen it with some intermediate supports.

This seamed to solve my problems – but when I began looking at how to fix some of the bad SAMs, I discovered a new problem.

As I searched for a way to resolder a magnet wire to the armature (which is used as the electrical ground) I noticed that the same ground was used for both the magnets and the stop swtich itself. From what I had read in the literature for the Classic control system, this would not work! Hence all of my SAMs may have to be replaced with more modern ones – and this would drive the price of the stops up to over $8,000!

I jotted down a circuit diagram of the SAM and sent it off to my friend Arthur at Classic. He responded quickly and explained that my SAMs would still work, as long as I sent Classic's -12V supply to the SAM's ground. I was very much releaved.

I looked on line and found several moudling stores around my town and began visiting them. It was just my luck that this very ordinary looking moudling (1/8" x 1 1/2" with one end rounded) was not at all standard! I finally purchased some oak door fillet moulding. Five pieces, each long enough to span a keyboard, cost only $17.50 and it was very strong. It was also a very high quality and would stain nicely. It was, hover, 1/4" too high! The salesman at the moulding store reccomended a cabinet shop nearby that could rip the moulding to my required dimentions. I went there immediately and the owner did this for me for free! I took his card as he is the exact kind of person I will need to refinish the console when I am done making everything work.

Here is the new moulding (upper) and the molding I acquired with the console (lower, and already drilled for pistons – but not in my configuraton.) I also purchased a drill press (another $110, but I'll have other uses for it) so I can drill the holes precisely.

I need to devise a method for mounting these too. My idea for now is to have 1/8" hardwood (maybe plywood) cut to abut to the bottoms of the piston mouldings and then attach to bottom of the key blocks. This should be very sturdy yet easily servicable. More on this later.

In the meantime, I received the price list from Klann. I can now order parts from both companies – and I'll need to since neither company has everything I need. I will order the pistons from Klann since they are less deep than the other brand and can use the same Mas-Con connectors as the rest of the console (no soldering.) I'll need 66 of these, so even at wholesale prices, this is a major purchase.

I just ordered the Mas-Con connectors and lots of other electrical parts from an online catalog. I included 200 solder lugs that I'll use with the mounting srews on the SAMs to create a terminal for afixing the -12V mentioned above.

I found a good supplier for the 26 AWG stranded wire I'll need for all the cabling. It is actually located about ten miles from home, so I will pick it up in person and save the shipping cost. I'll start with 200 feet each of ten different colors of wire – another major purchase.

Since I had gone as far as I could with the stop tabs, I switched gears and worked for a few days on the keyboards. You could see from the first photo of the "moving day" that the keybaords were not mounted correctly in the console when I obtained it. I wanted to be sure the keybaords were securely mounted according to AGO specifications.

The first step was to do some surgery. Ken (or someone) had already done a few smart things with the keyboards. He had immobilized two of the contact bars on each and wired those contacts in parallel. This was good. Then he had created cables from the keyboards that merged in a large set of terminal boards. Unfortunately, this ended up making all three keyboards into one giant, heavy, and unwieldy assembly. I reluctantly cut the cables so that I could handle each keyboard seperately.I then removed the magnets that used to move the contact bars in and out of position. Since these were pipe chest magnets, I saved them to return to Ken for use on his pipe organ as spares.

One problem I noticed was that the keyckeeks were only 2.25" high. AGO specifications require 2.5". This was going to play havoc with the spacing between the keyboards and the placement of the piston rails. At this point, I had resigned myself to constructing completely new piston rails using narrower molding than the ones Ken had built.

Now that the keyboards were mich lighter, Karen and I placed them in the console. We shimmed them and ajusted their tilt (using set screws on the keycheeks as well as screws on the back end of the contact assemblies.) I walked back an forth from the bedroom to my living room, making measurements on my Rodgers organ and moving the theater organ keyboards until they matched.The photo shows the result. There are definlte spaces between the keycheek bolsters that will have to be filled with something. However, the good news is that the piston boards can actually remain full-height! The other bad news was that the keyboards were not held firmly in place by any of the mechanisms that already existed on the console.

The next step was to find a way to attach the keyboards securely so that they would not move or vibrate while being played. I started by removing all the keyboards once again. I attached the accompaniment keyboard (lowest) using flat el-shaped mending plates under the overhang. Four screws attached it to the plates, which are in turn attached to the console. These cannot be seen unless you descend to the floor and look upward.

The great (middle keyboared) was a much bigger challenge. I ended up using a pair of 90 degree angle plates fastened to the inner face of the second console key tier and in turn fastened to the sides of the great keycheeks. These screws take a bit of acrobatics to insert – and I will need to remove them many times in order to further modify and service the keyboard! However, when there were combined with a new placement of the bracket at the back of the contact assembly, the great was firmly in place. Karen and I placed the solo (top keyboard) in the console and shimmed it into place. This one should be easy to secure - but that will have to wait until next week after I return from playing at the Mammoth Lakes Jazz Festival.

Before we quit for the night, we replaced the stop bolster assembly and the console lid to make sure everything still fit together properly. We then attached pedal and brought over the bench - just to see how the completed project will look someday!

Here is a photo of me playing the dummy console and imagining that sounds might be eminating from it.

I spent one night this last week examining the pedal contact assembly. This is contained in a wooden box that is about 6" high, 12" deep, and runs the entire width of the console. The pedals sit in front of this. When a pedal is depressed, it engages a crank on the front of this box. This, in turn, engages 16 separate switch contacts!In the original analog organ. A magnet would move each of 16 contact bars to allow the crank to close the corresponding set of contacts. I don't need that many- one will do. However, Ken had already thought of this. I looked into the box and someone (I assume it was Ken) had fastened three of the bars to they were always engaged. Then he wired the contacts for these in parallel. This should provide increased reliability. The only thing I had to do to the box was remove the old organ cabling (it was like removing a large tumor) and do some basic cleaning. The box now sits in the bottom of the organ console. I have not yet secured it in place. This will wait until I need to attach the pedal board.

When I acquired the console from Ken, I also took several boxes full of old "stop action magnets" (SAMs) that had been removed from this and other organs over the years. Some had stop tabs attached and others were empty. I also took several bags of stop tabs - although many of these were intended for pneumatic actions and I did not want to deal with modifying them to work with the SAMs. Ken also lent me an organ rectifier, which is simply a power supply that produces the voltage required to fire the two electromagnets on each SAM. One magnet flips the stop up and other flips it down. I used the rectifier to test the SAMs before installing them on the console.

I discovered that not all SAMs are alike. The company that makes these (Reisner) makes the metal protrusion to which the tabs are attached in two different angles. Only the steeper angle can be used on my console. Hence about half of Ken's SAMs (which he is selling to me at a LARGE discount since they are used) are useable.

You can see in the photo that I managed to find enough of the "steep angle" SAMs to populate the straight rail and about 2/3 of the lower horseshoe bolster. I will have to purchase more SAMs - the first major expense on my project. So far, the only money I have spent was $50 for the mover and about $50 to take my organist friends to lunch after the move!

Here is a view of the back of the bolster assembly showing the SAMs mounted and lots of random wire hanging loose. I plan to mount terminal strips on the bolsters for collecting the wires and then use some sort of removable connector to pass the cables into the guts of the console. This will wait until I have purchased and mounted the remaining SAMs.

The screws on the top of each SAM (as well as corresponding ones on the bottom) are used to control the throw of the stop tabs. The idea is to adjust these so that the tabs all line up in both their "on" and "off" positions. I have done this for the straight rail. Only the "on" positions are adjusted on the bolster so far. I will wait until the next time I move this assembly to a workbench to adjust the bottom screws.

Since the original organ using this console was smaller, I have had to drill new holes for mounting more SAMs. There will be 71 SAMs on each horseshoe bolster when I am done.