Electrolytic capacitors are the weak link in organs. Actually all older electronics. So why does a recently acquired organ work for a month and then die. Those electrolytic capacitors. See, they have a pliable rubber seal that keeps the liquid electrolyte from leaking out. Once the seal dries out it can crack and leak. It usually takes a month or two if the organ sat not played for years. Ideally you should turn an organ on for 30min-1hr every month. It keeps the rubber pliable. Now if you hear a 60hz (low Bb) hum, this is the filter capacitors in the power supply. An easy repair. In fact with solid state organs, hum or not, if the organ begins to lose operation of various settings go ahead and change the power supply capacitors. Never change a bunch at once. Change two or three and then turn the organ on and observe the changes. Changing many at once will be a headache troubleshooting if there is a failure. Also, it is not necessary to replace the big aluminum multi values in one 'can capacitor' with OEM. Just get individual values. Note: some can caps are positive ground so note the + to ground polarity when swapping out with individual caps. SAVE THE ORGANS!
Watching this made me realize how lucky I was to find an old lowrey spinet that was in working order😭😭 This video was hilarious tho instant subscription 🙏
Had this model in the house when I was young. It was a lot of fun. The lights that come on when you play a pedal show you how to play the corresponding major chord and if you use one of the toe switches it will show the minor version. The drums are interesting but the beats are pretty generic. Good to sample and set up your own patterns with them. The sassy brass had an envelope filter on it so it would have a wah type sound. The percussive instrument section (piano, hawaiian guitar, banjo, harpsichord) added a bit of attack to the notes in the top manual. The other toe switch let you bend the sound down a quarter note. The normal stops are pretty generic. Pretty sure the repeating pattern only happened on the banjo and it went in sync with the speed of the drum machine. If you have any other questions about the operation of this organ feel free to get in touch with me. Unfortunately I don't have any experience on fixing this machine other than tuning it. Of course most of these old home organs have very little value these days. A real tonewheel Hammond organ like a B3 has good resale value. A few of the combo organs are still in demand but you can get most of these sound in software these days or as patches on the newer keyboards.
Smashing it up is a lot kinder than just leaving it outside in the cold indefinately for months when it's only going to end up in the crusher anyway, so why not give it an istant demise? With all due respect repairing an organ can be very expensive and this one really wasn't worth repairing.
I feel sad that you’re in that situation, but sometimes that happens with free, or low cost organs. The person selling it just wants it gone, and probably doesn’t know anything about the instrument, other than it belonged to his grandmother, aunt, etc., or as was the case with two of the ones I got, they were left behind in apartments or houses. I’ve acquired several that way, and while there were a couple that were good, the other ones had issues. I don’t have them anymore due to a personal circumstance, where I had to give them up, but I have a Lowrey that I own up at my old church where they’re storing it until I can get it (when I can get a place of my own again, in other words, and it was temporarily used as a church organ, which is why it was at the church..., after the Conn we were using had pedal problems, but the new pastor doesn’t like the organ). Conn organs are usually very good organs (I’ve played them in church for years, but maybe not to my taste as far as an organ goes), but you said it had water damage, so it was probably left out in the rain, or the room it was in got flooded. All you can try to do is test it, to make sure everything works on it, before leaving where it is. Even if you hired someone to fix it, they might not be familiar with the electrical parts of an organ that old (and it’s probably a 50-60 year old organ, or it could be maybe a 1970s model one, which runs off of vacuum tubes), and you might not be able to get the parts anyway, as the company’s been out of business for many years. You could’ve, hypothetically speaking, been spending thousands of dollars to get it fixed, and to even get it playing again, and it might’ve been a money pit if you just band-aided it (just doing things to fix it for now, but not going the whole distance and restoring it.)
I just got a Conn Strummer Organ off of Facebook marketplace yesterday for 25 bucks and everything on it still works, the guy who was selling it said that the organ belonged to his mother, his mother must have been a professional because this organ has been very well maintained, it has a great Leslie simulator
I am sorry that happened to you but I owned that organ for a long time and it was far from Cheap. It cost $1,800 in 1974. CONN is one of the finest and respected names in organ manufacturing. They made very high quality organs, but I am sorry you got a CONN that was not taken care of!!!
I got the same model from Facebook Marketplace for free and still works great. Is anywhere i can find the manual that explain more of the features? I made an overview video ruclips.net/video/Rk-e6Rl-B0c/видео.html
![Felix "Unfair" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Oswujxm2Ag0/mqdefault.jpg)
Relatable. I have 3 organs in my room and there’s at least one thing wrong with each of them.
Electrolytic capacitors are the weak link in organs. Actually all older electronics. So why does a recently acquired organ work for a month and then die. Those electrolytic capacitors. See, they have a pliable rubber seal that keeps the liquid electrolyte from leaking out. Once the seal dries out it can crack and leak. It usually takes a month or two if the organ sat not played for years. Ideally you should turn an organ on for 30min-1hr every month. It keeps the rubber pliable.
Now if you hear a 60hz (low Bb) hum, this is the filter capacitors in the power supply. An easy repair. In fact with solid state organs, hum or not, if the organ begins to lose operation of various settings go ahead and change the power supply capacitors. Never change a bunch at once. Change two or three and then turn the organ on and observe the changes. Changing many at once will be a headache troubleshooting if there is a failure.
Also, it is not necessary to replace the big aluminum multi values in one 'can capacitor' with OEM. Just get individual values. Note: some can caps are positive ground so note the + to ground polarity when swapping out with individual caps. SAVE THE ORGANS!
Watching this made me realize how lucky I was to find an old lowrey spinet that was in working order😭😭 This video was hilarious tho instant subscription 🙏
Had this model in the house when I was young. It was a lot of fun. The lights that come on when you play a pedal show you how to play the corresponding major chord and if you use one of the toe switches it will show the minor version. The drums are interesting but the beats are pretty generic. Good to sample and set up your own patterns with them. The sassy brass had an envelope filter on it so it would have a wah type sound. The percussive instrument section (piano, hawaiian guitar, banjo, harpsichord) added a bit of attack to the notes in the top manual. The other toe switch let you bend the sound down a quarter note. The normal stops are pretty generic. Pretty sure the repeating pattern only happened on the banjo and it went in sync with the speed of the drum machine. If you have any other questions about the operation of this organ feel free to get in touch with me. Unfortunately I don't have any experience on fixing this machine other than tuning it.
Of course most of these old home organs have very little value these days. A real tonewheel Hammond organ like a B3 has good resale value. A few of the combo organs are still in demand but you can get most of these sound in software these days or as patches on the newer keyboards.
Pulled one just like that out of dumpster years ago, and I love it, sounds great
Smashing it up is a lot kinder than just leaving it outside in the cold indefinately for months when it's only going to end up in the
crusher anyway, so why not give it an istant demise? With all due respect repairing an organ can be very expensive and this one
really wasn't worth repairing.
Absolutely priceless 🤣
Just don't do it to a Hammond B3
Or else🤣👍👍
I would love to have that Leslie speaker. It's of more value than the rest of the organ.
I feel sad that you’re in that situation, but sometimes that happens with free, or low cost organs. The person selling it just wants it gone, and probably doesn’t know anything about the instrument, other than it belonged to his grandmother, aunt, etc., or as was the case with two of the ones I got, they were left behind in apartments or houses. I’ve acquired several that way, and while there were a couple that were good, the other ones had issues. I don’t have them anymore due to a personal circumstance, where I had to give them up, but I have a Lowrey that I own up at my old church where they’re storing it until I can get it (when I can get a place of my own again, in other words, and it was temporarily used as a church organ, which is why it was at the church..., after the Conn we were using had pedal problems, but the new pastor doesn’t like the organ). Conn organs are usually very good organs (I’ve played them in church for years, but maybe not to my taste as far as an organ goes), but you said it had water damage, so it was probably left out in the rain, or the room it was in got flooded. All you can try to do is test it, to make sure everything works on it, before leaving where it is. Even if you hired someone to fix it, they might not be familiar with the electrical parts of an organ that old (and it’s probably a 50-60 year old organ, or it could be maybe a 1970s model one, which runs off of vacuum tubes), and you might not be able to get the parts anyway, as the company’s been out of business for many years. You could’ve, hypothetically speaking, been spending thousands of dollars to get it fixed, and to even get it playing again, and it might’ve been a money pit if you just band-aided it (just doing things to fix it for now, but not going the whole distance and restoring it.)
I just got a Conn Strummer Organ off of Facebook marketplace yesterday for 25 bucks and everything on it still works, the guy who was selling it said that the organ belonged to his mother, his mother must have been a professional because this organ has been very well maintained, it has a great Leslie simulator
The early 90s Casio would have done better
That thing wasn't much of an instrument even when it was new
did you say it was a Ship organ. Think it could have been fixed. But even with a major repair it still would be the same. A ship organ.
Any one remember the Bird Duplex.
Getva newer lowrey SU series or later or get a digital Allen anything else is junk
I am sorry that happened to you but I owned that organ for a long time and it was far from Cheap. It cost $1,800 in 1974. CONN is one of the finest and respected names in organ manufacturing. They made very high quality organs, but I am sorry you got a CONN that was not taken care of!!!
Love this
I got the same model from Facebook Marketplace for free and still works great. Is anywhere i can find the manual that explain more of the features? I made an overview video ruclips.net/video/Rk-e6Rl-B0c/видео.html
my wurlitzer 4500 in a nutshell
I used to repair Wurlitzer organs. The 4500 was one of my favorite models, made before Wurlitzer started putting out crap.