The Organ Forum

Boy I'd like to pistol whip the mechanical engineer who came up with these flimsy spade terminals on early Hammond tonewheel generators.  Don't get me wrong, it's no cliche' that Mr. Hammond's generator and organs in general are mechanical works of art, but the durability and quality of some of these components is very questionable  *I won't even get into the foam under the manuals which I've only yet read about*.  In order for me to effectively clean and lubricate the L-103's tonewheel shafts, bushings, and bearings, I'm going to have to completely disconnect it from the wiring harness and flip it over on a special bench mount that Steve Leigh of Prokeys designed  *God bless Mr. Leigh... he's the best*.  Has anyone ever had this frustrating problem uninstalling a TWG?!?  It doesn't seem to be my soldering iron so much as the cheap desoldering pump I'm using, a Radio Shack syringe model with a pneumatic plunger and push button action.  The recoil causes the tip to bounce back into the terminal with enough force to break off 5 of the 23 terminals I've desoldered wires from thus far.  What gets me the most is the fact that these terminal spades are tapered where they meet the portion that's permanantely stud-tacked to the PCB terminal strip, making simple modular replacment impossible.

So, I'm left with a very unaesthetically pleasing mess.  I suppose I could break off the bottom spades of every terminal and use the top spade.  But I've come up with an interesting idea.  Some of the geophone logging tools my Dad used to use in his work with ConocoPhillip's research and exploration division used a 96-pin connector.  I'm going to research this a little more and see about the possibility of fabricating a connector that will allow me to easily connect/disconnect the TWG for any future maintainence.

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Noah Benzing

that sounds like a damn good idea to me. this once again inspires my interest to control the twg while it's outside of the console.

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Hammond B3
Hammond L-112
Hammond R-124
Hammond H-112
Hammond M2
Hammond 123
Hammond HR-40 tone cabinet
torn apart Gulbransen
Leslie 147
Roland Juno-G
Alvarez 12-string acoustic
Peavey Raptor electric

I just swapped a generator out of a B-3. No desoldering used. A hot iron and careful removal of the wire. I told you before you don't have to remove the generator. The L-series is one of the few models that has the bottom of the generator exposed. I have loosened more stuck generators in 30 years than I can count. Never had to take one out. As I suggested, you could turn the whole organ over and oil it easily from the bottom.

George

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Organs

Hammond B-3/145
Hammond Super B (MIDI Controller)
Yamaha FX-1 - TM-1 x 2

Synths

Korg Triton Pro
Yamaha P-80
Native Instruments Soft Synths;
Akoustik Piano, Electrik Piano, B4II,
FM-8, Pro-53, Massive, Absynth,
OPXpro, Mtron

OF course you realize that once you get the TWG out, fix it, add a connector to both ends of the wiring harness, and put it back in, you'll NEVER again need to take it out. You will have spent all that time extending the wires so they narrow down to one spot, cause all sorts of cross-talk, and drive you nuts as you figure out which wires are connected incorrectly.

Nice idea, but I think the reliability of the TWG and soldered connections pretty much says it all. Still, it's fun doing all that work and cursing the cheap terminal strips.

Bob M.