Bouncy bass pedals

[vMac]

At church we have a Hammond C2. It's great except I've found the bass pedals to be nearly unusable. We've had them off for quite some time because they're not really necessary. The leslie doesn't even work well for bass, but I'd like to get them in working condition, nevertheless. The problem is they bounce. It seems as if the spring isn't tight enough. In other words, when you step on a pedal and let off, the pin hits the top part and bounces back. I don't know how else to describe it exactly. It makes even tapping in quarter notes nearly impossible and if you want to do anything where you switch notes quickly, it sounds terrible. So I was wondering if this is even normal. I'm used to playing on an M3, which I think has really nice bass pedals, despite there being only 12 of them. I don't exactly like the B/C bass pedals, but still I'd like to get them working. So has anyone else had this problem, and is there anything I can do about it, other than simply replace them?

Thanks

[fredy2]

Often times some dampening material like a thick felt is used to arrest the upward movement and absorb the kinetic energy so the pedals don't bounce... could this possibly be missing or worn out and squished so it is hard? One needs alossy material to absorb the energy...

Fred

[Hammond101]

I agree with Fred. The stop felts are worn out. On an instrument that was used institutionally and last built in '54 this would not be unusual. This should not be an expensive repair and if you got the parts online you most likely could do it yourself.

[vMac]

Sorry for the giant bump, but I thought this might be worthwhile to some people. After becoming fed up with the behavior of the bass pedals on this C2, I took off the wood piece that is screwed on to the side facing the bench. Then I found out that the pedals were merely bolted to piece of metal that was bolted into the wood. So I tightened down each of the bolts. The trick was to get them just snug because they barely move if they're too tight. That eliminated the bouncing problem.

[Orgrinder010]

This was the same exact problem that I faced when helping set up for the Bob Militello concert. Bobby Jones brought in a rental B3 with 147.
The problem we had was the low F# was also very bouncy. Bobby Jones likes to kick out bass lines instead of cheating with his left Hand, so a bouncy pedal was a problem indeed.
Just as you said, vMac, the solution lies on those little rails of bolts under the heel-rest cap. Now only if we had a proper 1/4-inch socket wrench at the time instead of those needle-nosed pliers.....