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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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..

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!