Working on d' Organ, all the Liv' Long Day

The picture is of the pedal mechanism inside my organ. My organ has two pedals. The right pedal is the Crescendo pedal that works just fine, the left pedal is the Swell pedal that doesn't work at all. The difference is that the Swell pedal is a volume pedal, whereas the Crescendo pedal turns more stops on or off. I have been working on the inside of my organ to try to see how to fix the Swell pedal and some other problems that I have with my organ.

I bought the technical manual for my WurliTzer organ. Every now and then I open it up and do some exploring. It looks like somebody has come in to maintain the organ, but the fixes they did are not what the manual recommends. For example someone "fixed" a popping sound in one of the pedal notes by wrapping a connector with electricians tape so that the only contact being made was a physical contact, not an electrical one. This stopped an electrical popping sound that was made whenever those two pedals were played. Well the tape fell off of one of the contacts, so it sounded like gunfire when I played those notes. Well I checked the manual and I turned a screw on the pedal contact system and adjusted the contacts so this won't happen in the future. Sometimes it helps to read the instructions!!

I also found out what was not wrong with the Swell Pedal and a couple of missing notes on my flute stops. I still don't know what is really wrong with these systems, but at least I know what is NOT wrong!

I check everything about the Swell Pedal (see picture) in the manual and everything seems to be fine with the Swell Pedal mechanism, it seems to me that the reason why the swell pedal does not work is because there is something wrong with the system once it gets into the Pre-Amp in my organ. I have decided that I am Not going to take my Pre-Amp apart until after my dad comes down next time. He knows a lot more about electronics in the 1945 era.

I have figured out that the missing note on the flute section has to be with a magnet in the windchest that opens a little door that allows air to flow into the reed. I have eliminated all the other possibilities. I have yet to start working on the magnet assemblies.

I still don't know what is wrong with my diapasons yet. I can hear the reeds sound in the organ, but they are not getting amplified. Maybe the signal is getting lost before it gets to the Pre-Amp, or maybe it is getting lost once inside the Pre-Amp.

I also have done a general cleaning of the insides of the organ. I used to have about 17 keys on the swell manual that would stick once you depressed them, but now they work fine because my wife showed me how to clean the connections. I had some problems with little pops when I played the pedal notes, but most of those problems went away after I cleaned all the dust bunnies out of the pedal contacts inside the organ.

There is always more work to be done on an organ like this, but it is fascinating to see how it all fits together sometimes.