The Organ Forum

I just bought a Baldwin Cinema II, and am having mucho problems with only a few things -- reeds and strings. The reed and string stops on both the accompaniment and solo manuals don't speak, and neither does the reed on the pedal. Yet, the string stop on the pedal DOES speak. And, to make matters even more odd, the Diapason on the Acc manual doesn't speak, either! So, basically, the only voice that works is the flutes. The FantomFingers doesn't work, either, which is fine, because I have no intention of ever using it. 

If I'm not mistaken, the toy counter plays through the same channel as the reeds and strings, and the toys work just fine, so I'm fairly sure it isn't the amp for that channel. Does anyone have any tech information they'd be willing to share? Service manuals for sale or rent? Know of any good techs in the Metro Milwaukee area? Suggests? Comments? Shouts or groans? I know enough about both organs and electronics to be dangerous, but not enough to be truly useful. Any help is totally appreciated, and is guaranteed to count for good karma.

-JOE 

You really need a service manual and the electronics know how in order to repair it.     The circuitry is all discrete components except for the auto rhythm.  the auto play along feature is tied up with other circuitry so will have to be repaired.    You will need an oscilloscope, analogue multimeter, soldering iron with of course electronics pliers & side cutters. I have the service manual and can scan pages if you require. The service manual can be obtained from musicelectronics   4799270822  . Think they have a web site. I had one with several faults and took about 200 man hrs to repair.  

     A couple of 100 1N4148 diodes may not go astray either.

regards Robert
 

Joe,

Don't wait another day. Order the service manual from MusicElectronics, as mentioned above. It's quite impossible to follow the signals through the organ without the manual at hand, and it doesn't cost very much.

That's not a simple organ by any means, but a competent tech with Baldwin experience should be able to get it going at a reasonable expense. It has a lot of good sounds and some interesting trinkets too, if you're into that.

You have some sort of simple audio problem, I think. There isn't any fancy keying circuitry in that organ, everything comes from the same tone generators and all stops are direct keyed right at the keyboards. So if some stops work, the others are just not getting through their particular stop-switching, tone filter, pre-amp, and audio amp circuits.

You could have a dead amplifier channel, and that would be easy to check. Just listen to each of the three speakers and see if anything at all comes from each one. The flutes will obviously be in the rotary speaker, bass in the 15" speaker, and the reeds and strings should be coming from the other (stationary) speaker. The rhythm and percussions should also come from the same speaker as the reeds and strings, but may be playing through the bass channel, and the reed/string amp may indeed be dead.

A dead amp in this model is often due to the output capacitor -- there is one on each channel -- having failed. This is an inexpensive part and easily replaced by a tech. You should also verify that the volume pot for that channel is not just resting on a dead spot -- turn it through it's range a few times.

Good luck.

John