I promised some pictures of the haunted organ I am building. (Thanks again to MsMeeples for the awesome idea, pictures, and videos of her build).
This is a 1960 ElectroVoice organ. It had been in storage in my neighbors crawlspace for many years and wasn't working right when I powered it up. My neighbor sold it to me for $20 and was hoping I could use it for Halloween. The only stipulation is that I have to make sure her in-laws wouldn't recognize it when I'm done with it! No problem there!
I plan to make it look like a pipe organ.
Lots of vacuum tubes in there. A few of them actually say "Made in U.S.S.R".
After the guts have been removed:
I had to remove about about 50 tiny bolts to remove all the electronics from underneath the keys:
Here you can see the plunger-style metal shafts with little red rubber boots. When you press a key, this shaft would push a tiny wire onto a bus bar, completing the circuit for that key. I didn't make those nasty cuts in the plywood. It was actually already like that! I'm not sure if that was done during the original manufacture or if it was done for a repair. It's rather crude and doesn't fit with the rest of the construction.
I originally built a PVC shaft that goes underneath the all the keys and created little PVC ridges using slightly larger PVC that was glued to the shaft. Unfortunately, it did not work. The plungers got stuck when they should have been going back up.
I'm going to change the whole mechanism to look something like this:
I think this will work better. I will have to cut more of the wooden floor away to allow enough room for the bigger cams. Hopefully I will have better luck!
This is a 1960 ElectroVoice organ. It had been in storage in my neighbors crawlspace for many years and wasn't working right when I powered it up. My neighbor sold it to me for $20 and was hoping I could use it for Halloween. The only stipulation is that I have to make sure her in-laws wouldn't recognize it when I'm done with it! No problem there!


Lots of vacuum tubes in there. A few of them actually say "Made in U.S.S.R".

After the guts have been removed:

I had to remove about about 50 tiny bolts to remove all the electronics from underneath the keys:

Here you can see the plunger-style metal shafts with little red rubber boots. When you press a key, this shaft would push a tiny wire onto a bus bar, completing the circuit for that key. I didn't make those nasty cuts in the plywood. It was actually already like that! I'm not sure if that was done during the original manufacture or if it was done for a repair. It's rather crude and doesn't fit with the rest of the construction.

I originally built a PVC shaft that goes underneath the all the keys and created little PVC ridges using slightly larger PVC that was glued to the shaft. Unfortunately, it did not work. The plungers got stuck when they should have been going back up.

I'm going to change the whole mechanism to look something like this:

I think this will work better. I will have to cut more of the wooden floor away to allow enough room for the bigger cams. Hopefully I will have better luck!