Kimball Sensation MTS (Magic Tone Selector)

[dfsmith26]

A few months ago, I bought a Kimball Sensation Organ and have been working on fixing the few problems it had and have by and large been successful. One feature I am puzzled by is the Magic Tone Selector that selects the function the knee lever will perform. Most of the functions are self explanatory and work fine, such as pitch, rhythm stop, drum roll, razz and posthorn, but I cannot figure out what the one labeled "minor" does. I thought it might make a major chord from the auto chord section into a minor chord but as far as I can determine it does nothing. From that I assume it is not working, but it is hard to fix if you don't know what it is supposed to do. I recently obtained the service manual, but while the boards are fairly well documented, the actual physical controls do not seem to be represented on the drawings so I haven't been able to figure out anything from that. I have also looked at other Kimball manuals, but the Sensation seems to be the only one that had that function. All the others have "wood block" in place of that function.

So, does anyone know what the "minor" function on the MTS selector is supposed to do? Thanks for any help.

Dale Smith

[andyg]

IIRC, you're right, it should produce minor chords. If it isn't, well you're not missing much unless you use 1 finger chords. If you do, then stop and learn some real ones!

[dfsmith26]

Andy,

I don't use 1 finger chords. They are harder to learn than doing it the right way. It appears that Kimball may have tried to group the chords is some logical sense, but didn't really succeed. Putting C and C-minor a full octave apart was really awful. I just wanted to get this organ working as originally designed. Apparently it doesn't do what it is supposed to do as to this feature, but it isn't much of a loss. I also doubt that I will use the knee lever much anyway.

The only other thing I haven't been able to fix yet is the absence of percussive keying on the third F, (key 25). For now I am playing around it, but I need to get this fixed. I have checked for loose wires, but don't want to chance doing anything to the boards, so I will probably get a pro to check this out. Getting 6 out of 8 problems fixed isn't too bad.

Dale

[Jan Girardot]

Dale, I'll bet a dollar to a donut your percussion problem on note 25 is due to a bad keyer, or a loose connection. See if you could swap that keyer with another, next door.

. . . Jan
the OrganGrinder

[dfsmith26]

Jan,

I am assuming that by keyer, you are referring to the connection on the keyer board, in this case, the percussion sustain keyer board, not the actual connection on the keyboard. From what I have been able to determine, there is only one connection on the actual keyboard as that is all that is illustrated in the manuals. I figure that if it were something on the keyboard, that note would not work fine on all the other voices, including the non-percussive special effects, such as solo violin, brass mute, accordion and hawaiian guitar. Before I dig in, I want to make sure I fully understand what I am doing and am comfortable that it is within my competence. Thanks for helping me learn.

Dale