For several years, I had been searching for a Vox Continental organ. With my limited technical skills, I figured I’d better get one in pretty good shape. Easier said than done.
Nothing ever seemed to come up for sale locally. And eBay didn’t seem like a good alternative. Most of the sellers seemed to be people who bought them a day earlier at a yard sale, and really had no idea whether they even worked. (Or they pretended to know nothing, so they could later claim ignorance when it arrived with half the tone generator boards missing.) Some looked really nice, but the thought of letting UPS work its magic on a fragile piece of vintage electronics was scary. Price was an issue, too. Continentals that weren’t fully functional, and sometimes looked like they had been fairly well beat-up, regularly fetched $1,500 to $2,500. Somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to pay more for a slightly abused combo organ than I had paid a few years ago to buy a lovely Hammond B2 organ and two Leslie speakers. I kept losing auctions in the last 15 seconds. Things weren’t looking good…
I was getting discouraged, but I kept looking. In April 2009, I spotted an eBay auction for a Connie that was located in my town. I emailed the owner, and found out it was at a used guitar store just a couple of miles from my house. Here’s what I found when I got there:
Pretty ugly, huh? Actually, in some ways the pictures (which are from the seller’s auction) made it look worse then it was: He photographed it without even wiping off the grime, and somehow, his camera made it look like the orange lid had been painted bright red. And his lens must have had some awful distortion, because it made it look like the rail under the keys was bowed out — but it was not. Still, this thing was a wreck. The back panel was ripped all over. I really liked the modern AC receptacle installation. (I just imagined the Tech from Hell working on this: “You want a modern plug there, kid? I’ll grab my hole saw. It’ll just take a minute,”) And just to add to the fun, it didn’t work, either. Half the keys didn’t play at all; the rest made vague croaking noises or were missing footages. No legs. No volume pedal.
The Vox Continental of my dreams, right?
On the plus side, it was an English Continental, with wooden keys and that original British mystique. It looked complete electronically. And, seeing that it was already seemingly beaten to death and I could cart it home myself, I certainly wouldn’t have to worry about the condition in which it would arrive at my house. I could pretty much guarantee that it would be just as junky when it arrived in my home as it was in the store.
I really didn’t want this “beauty” that badly; I was feeling stupid just considering buying something so abused. But I figured that if I could get it cheap enough, I could at least sell some parts to recover some of my costs if things didn’t work out. So, I offered the guy the $399 starting price from the auction. He said he’d have to get $500 for it. I thanked him and started to walk out. But then, I remembered the Vox equivalent of the “Hammond buyers’ secret.”
(The Hammond buyers’ secret, for the uninitiated, is that most thrift shops and people who inherit Grandpa’s Hammond haven’t figured out that there is a sequence of flipping the Start and Run switches that makes a tonewheel Hammond spring to life. When hitting the start switch fails to produce any tones, they assume it’s not working and price it accordingly. Probably the source of many bargains…)
Now, the Continental secret is that you can sometimes bring a seemingly dead UK or Italian Connie back to life by slowly and patiently turning the bias pots on each of the 12 tone generator cards. It’s worth a try, I figured. So I backed away from the door, and asked the clerk to remove the orange top. I started fiddling with a few bias pots, and could hear the tones returning, note by note. Those notes sounded great, too. I figured it might be fixable, pulled out my credit card and carted it home.
By the end of that evening, much of it was functioning beautifully. I had cleaned the contacts (mostly by playing, but a few stubborn tones required a little work with a pipe cleaner and some contact cleaner), cleaned the drawbar contacts and cleaned and adjusted the bias pots, For a week or so, it seemed like I had to fiddle with the pots of a few notes every day, but after that, they just seemed to settle in.
Within a few days, I re-soldered a handful of broken wires, which restored all but one of the missing tones. (It’s got one broken key contact, which means one key is missing the 8 foot tone — which really isn’t very noticeable when several drawbars are pulled. I’ll tackle that sometime when I’m feeling brave.) Tuned it using a chromatic guitar tuner. Levelled a few low-lying keys by adjusting the key springs.
Then I started working on the cosmetics. The orange top was in pretty good shape, but looked a whole lot better after being cleaned successively with Dawn dishwashing detergent, Simple Green and a weak bleach solution, and rubbed quite gently with a Scotchbrite pad. The insides were surprisingly clean (I was expecting rat stuff inside), and I just vacuumed and damp-wiped there, The area where the Rexine was intact got a good gentle washing, too. When it dried, I began gluing down little pieces of Rexine that had been ripped.
A visit to the neighborhood hardware store yielded a bunch of replacements for missing screws and bolts. I found some plastic polish, and used it to spiff-up the control panel.
Next task was attacking the ugly aftermarket alterations that had been done. I bought a replacement Mains switch from North Coast Music. It’s similar to the original switch (it doesn’t quite match), but it looked much better than the metal “bat” toggle switch someone had installed as a replacement. It took a little filing of the hole to get it to fit, but not so much that it would prevent me from using an original switch if I ever find one.
On to the rusty replacement AC receptacle that had been installed crudely into the back panel. I decided to remove that, and replace it with an original English three-pin Bulgin receptacle that would fit into the hole next to the guitar cable jack. These are expensive and hard to find (since they are no longer made), but I found a semi-reasonable price from a UK seller on ebay who had both the receptacle and the matching plug. I installed the receptacle with the help of a Yahoo Combo Organs Group member who provided a schematic — and interpreted it for me (thanks Norman!). And I installed the plug on a nice, heavy-duty extension cord to serve as the new power cord. All this left me with a large round hole in the back panel (where the replacement receptacle had been).
In my opinion, one of the coolest features of the Continental is the chrome z-stand. It’s just not right without one. But there seem to be far more Vox organs in the world than there are Vox stands. Now, this makes no sense, given that they are durable, and they aren’t small enough to get misplaced like, say, pen caps and socks. So, they really command premium prices. You can buy replica stands from North Coast, but, in my opinion, they just don’t have the same soul. So, what was I to do?
Okay. I’ve misled you here for dramatic effect. I actually solved my dilemma by making a quick decision: The Vox Jaguar that I had bought six months earlier for $200 was about to “donate” its more or less perfect z-stand, its wing bolts, its original Vox volume pedal and its leg case to the new organ in the household (Mighty thoughtful of the Jag to volunteer all its accessories, without even hesitating. Funny, the Jag didn’t even complain when I sold it for a nice profit a few weeks later, despite stripping it of all those accessories.)
Now, purists among you may point out that the Jag accessories are slightly different than the ones orginally packaged with a UK Continental. That’s true. They were made for Italian-built Jags and Continentals. But they are, in my opinion, close enough. (And they were “free.”) The stand got shined with ultra-fine steel wool. The volume pedal got disassembled so I could tighten it to eliminate some slipping, I used contact cleaner to get rid of static in the volume pot, re-soldered one plug, and used contact cement to glue down the rubber mat.
Unfortunately, the Jag wingbolts that hold the stand to the organ have different threading than those on UK Continentals. Since I don’t plan to gig with my Connie (and have no need to pack it up), I just bought some conventional 5/16″ bolts (short ones, since there is a pitch difference between the original threading and the bolts available to me). But I missed the original look of the wing bolts, so I invested a couple of bucks to replace the t-nuts in the organ cabinet to make them compatible with the Italian wingbolts. (Once again, I violated the sacred trust of keeping everything original. Oh well, practicality wins again.)
Now the organ was 98% functional electronically. While great improvements had been made cosmetically, there were parts of it that were still ugly. Fortunately, the Rexine was mostly tattered in just two areas: The underside (which I really didn’t care about, since you don’t see it when it’s set up) and the back panel (which had swiss cheese Rexine, a big hole in the case, no chrome glides and no Continental nameplate.
I considered re-Tolexing the whole organ, but rejected that because I didn’t want to lose the original smooth Rexine casing. Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, you can’t buy any covering that matches the original. So, what to do?
I got this wacky idea that I could strip off a piece of matching Rexine from the inside of the Continental’s carrying case lid. With a little guidance from a Combo Organs Group list member (thanks Senhor California), I used a hair dryer to soften the glue, and very slowly pulled off the Rexine, being careful not to rip or stretch it. Then, I washed it in Simple Green to remove most of the residual glue from the back.
At this point, I decided I needed a little professional help: I called a guy whose company does leather restoration. They have some experience working with woodwork and upholstery, since they often rehab leather furniture. He surely was not as experienced in these matters as an upholstery shop person might have been. But the guy was clearly a perfectionist, and he immediately recognized that the organ wasn’t a piece of old junk — it was a treasured vintage instrument. I figured I’d rather have someone who really cared about doing a good job than someone with more experience who might be watching the clock while he worked.
So, he got the assignment of plugging the AC receptacle hole with a wood patch, using wood filler to fix some bruises, sanding off the old glue and residue, and using the salvaged Rexine to recover the back panel and back corners of the organ. Also, he had his leather-dyeing specialist mix up a batch of dye to match the Rexine, which he applied to camouflage some small scrapes elsewhere on the organ. It took him about three weeks to complete the job, for which he charged me $125, which I considered to be a real bargain.
When I got it back, I added a replica Continental badge (from Vintage Vibe) and the three missing chrome glides (from North Coast Music). I think the results are pretty spectacular. Have a look:
Not bad for starting with a $500 junker organ!
Now, two months into my ownership, I’m down to this short punchlist:
1) Replace the single broken key contact;
2) The vibrato on the D# notes doesn’t work on all the footages, making it a little weaker than the other notes when you play with multiple drawbars pulled (which I always do). (It only works on the IV drawbar.) I’ve already got some good ideas from the group on how to tackle this;
3) Its missing one yellow drawbar pull. (I’ve located someone who has a spare, but needs to find it).
So, the moral of this story is that you need not be some sort of combo organ genius to rehab one of these devices. With a little help from your friends (in my case, the Combo Organ Group — including many hours I spent reading in that list’s archives), you can handle much/most/all of this stuff yourself. You, too, may reach a point at which you will be well-advised to call in a pro, but if you work carefully and find some good advice, you will surprise yourself at how much you can do.
Epilog…
9/28/09: Task #1 is done! My Connie had just one broken key contact. In searching the Yahoo combo organ archives, I mostly found warnings that this was a horrendous task, not to be undertaken by mere mortals. But I also found several posts from Bryan Lord, who talked about fixing one with a guitar string and some glue. I contacted Bryan, and he provided some more details. (Thanks Bryan!)
What I did mostly borrowed from his experience, but I believe I improvised a little from his method. Here’s what I did:
I took a length of unwound electric guitar string, cut it about four inches longer than the length of a key contact. On one side, I bent a length of roughly 3/8 of an inch at a 90 degree angle, to form an “L” shape. Starting with the base of the “L”, I threaded the string between the buss bars and through the tiny hole in the “pusher” that moves the contacts as a key is depressed.
In my case, much of the bottom of the broken contact was still in place. So, with a little trial and error, I was able to slip the base of the L between the remains of the old contact and the flat surface to which it was soldered. I slid the base of the new contact in far enough so that it made contact with the round loop in the old contact.
So, now, the new contact was being held in place by the tension of the old one, and was touching the old contact in at least two points. It seemed like a pretty good temporary connection. So, I fired up the organ — and the new contact worked!
The next step was to glue everything into place. On Bryan’s suggestion, I mixed up some quick-setting JB Weld epoxy. I used a very thin wooden rod to dab some epoxy on the places where the two contacts touched each other. (Since the new contact was being held in place by the tension of the old contact, there was no need to hold the pieces in place to let them set. So, I probably didn’t need the quick-setting version.) You can’t really see what you’re doing in there with the glue, so I just hit several places with the glue to be sure.
The next morning, I gave the new contact a tug. It seemed quite secure. I cut off the excess guitar string, and the key now works perfectly.
Is this a permanent fix? Hard to say. I suppose it could fail tomorrow. But it seems quite secure, and I am hopeful that this will be long-lasting. (Bryan says his fix was done 7 years ago — and is still fine.)
Honestly, if I had five or ten broken contacts, I would try to fix them “the right way.” But for a single key contact, this certainly seems like the way to go.
(I’ve been told that replacement contacts measure .39 mm, making them equaivalent to the G string (third smallest) on a superlight guitar string set. The original contacts are gold-plated to prevent corrosion. A nickel-plated guitar string would be a reasonable corrosion-resistant substitute. In any case, make sure the string isn’t coated with something non-conductive, like plastic.)
But keep reading for better solutions for this problem…
10/10/09: Task #3 is done! A benefactor, who asked to remain anonymous, dug into his parts box and came up with a yellow 4′ drawbar pull. Never thought I’d find one! That’s the final cosmetic piece I needed. Looks good!
10/24/09: Task #2 is done. My Vox is completely functional! Guess I forgot that the IV drawbar sounds on each key come from the tone generator boards of different notes (since they are not fundamental tones). So, the vibrato was completely disfunctional on my D# notes. I swapped another board into the D# board location and the vibrato worked just fine, so I knew the problem was with the D# board.
Much thanks to John Brewer, a member of the Yahoo Combo Organ group, who, in a series of off-line emails, very patiently walked me through the process of using an analog meter to trace the vibrato signal on the board. It turned out to be a single faulty capacitor between the vibrato input pin and the oscillator. (And how fitting that an Englishman should help me solve the last issue on my UK Continental.)
My Vox now works like the day it was born!
I can’t believe it’s done! The organ looks great and works perfectly!
And still more!
January 2010: I got tired of having to frequently tweak the bias pots on each tone generator board when the lowest footages dropped out. And after a while, I found it hard to find any pot setting that would work. So I replaced all 12 bias pots. I got them from Vintage Vibe. There are probably cheaper sources, but you’ve got to love a company that has a ton of vintage keyboard repair videos on YouTube. Between my Vox, my Hammond and my Wurli, I’ve learned a ton — and avoided a lot of service calls — by using their videos. Here’s the video for installing bias pots. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8AKjvq9sks
March 2010: Found someone in Scotland who was willing to sell a working original Mains switch for a reasonable price. Subbed it for the North Coast replacement switch I had added. It’s a small cosmetic improvement, but that was the only item on the exterior of the organ that wasn’t original or a good reproduction part, so I was really pleased to find one.
By the way, these often-broken original switches can generally be repaired. Contact me for details. Or I would be glad to buy your broken switches.
Sept. 2013: Okay, I got compulsive. Bought this volume pedal (which is what Vox supplied with the UK-made Connies) to replace my Italian Connie pedal.
And then, in 2018, when I saw a nicer pedal, I could hardly resist:
May 2014: Well, my guitar string contact fix finally failed, as did two subsequent efforts to restore the makeshift fix. Finally, under the influence of a friend whose technical skills far exceed my own, I decided to do a proper fix, and completely disassemble the contact assembly to add a new contact wire. To prepare for this, I went on eBay, and bought some spare contact boards, so I would have some contacts to use in the repair.
Well, if all’s well that ends well, then this is a happy story. It’s all fixed and working properly. But in between my decision to tackle this job and my declaration that it was fixed, there was a period of several months in which my poor Connie lay in pieces, and I was convinced I had rendered it so disabled that it could never be fixed. I thought I had converted this wonderful instrument into a pile of useless parts. In fact, I was even shopping for a replacement organ.
I encountered two main problems: In the disassembly and assembly process, I bent many of the contact wires. (Eventually I found a very effective way to straighten them.) And the re-assembly process, without benefit of the alignment jigs that were likely used in the Vox factory, was hellish. It took many frustrating iterations to finally find a method that worked. It was very painstaking work. And then I had to work my way through a variety of contact issues I created in the re-assembly process. But it’s all good now.
I really can’t decide whether, if the need to do this job arose again, whether I would avoid it at any cost — or whether I would figure that my hard-won experience would make the job much easier a second time around. In any event, this is clearly a job not to be taken lightly. You need patience and skill to tackle this task. (And depending on your disposition, a large vocabulary of foul language may prove helpful…)
June 2016: I finally learned the secret of replacing key contacts permanently, quickly, and without losing your mind! First, get a small supply of these contact boards from a parts Connie. (Vintage keys techs can often sell them to you.)
Loosen the key contact assembly top just enough to create some slack, but not enough to either remove the cover or let the contact boards slip out of alignment. There’s a little flexibility in these boards. Flex the one with the broken contact enough to remove it from its slots. Reinstall a replacement one by flexing it into place. You’ll need to get the contact wires through the tiny holes in the “pusher stick” that moves up and down as you hit and release keys. This may require a lot of patience, and the use of a small set of needle nose pliers to carefully guide each contact through its hole. Re-solder the wires to each of the correct contacts, and you’re ready to go.
Some of this will make more sense to you once you take a close look at the whole contact assembly. This is definitely the best way to handle this job. I was able to replace five broken contacts on an Italian Connie this way, with relatively little trouble. It’s worth noting that it’s possible to break one of these boards when you flex it into place. So, you’ll want to get a few spares to tackle this job. Occasionally, you can also knock some of the adjacent boards out of their slots when doing this, especially if you’ve loosened the top too much. Just flex them back into place.
Finally, some encouragement for those who see the $3,000+ Continentals listed on eBay and Reverb and think they’ll never find one at a reasonable price: Between 2009 (when I bought the organ described in this blog) and 2017, I bought five Continentals, paying between between $426 and $625 for each. All were bought locally near my home in Michigan, most of them off Craigslist. Two UK models, two US versions and an Italian. They were mostly in nice cosmetic shape, had no critical missing parts, and needed only minor electronic repairs. Only one included a Z-stand. I passed along a US model to a friend for my acquisition price. I fixed the others (feeling good about putting them back into service) and then re-sold them at moderate prices. (And in the process, I improved my original UK organ by swapping a few better parts from the other organs before I sold them.)
In my area, you can often go a year or two without seeing a Continental on Craigslist. So I don’t exactly live in a Vox Continental mecca. But patience (and careful monitoring of the market) can eventually pay off for you, too.
Hear the sounds of a Vox Continental
October 2018 note: I just sold this organ to trade up to an even nicer organ. Its story is here: https://tinyurl.com/ydcz3tjt
I’m hoping people find this web page helpful as they rehab Continentals. I’d welcome hearing from you with comments or questions. Send them to alan.lenhoff – at- gmail.com
I have an Italian ’66 Continental. Can you contact me? I have some questions.
I have my original continental and have thought about using it on the gig with the group I currently work with. Nord made it easy to get the sound but there is something unique about an original owner playing in a classic band from the 60’s that actually hit top ten and used a Vox. As I said I use a Nord but perhaps it is time to bring the real thing out of the closet. It works well except fro 16″ on a couple notes which would be lost in translation. My question is about the cosmetics. I would need all new red and black covering. Where do you find it today? North Coast used to have it but I no longer see it. I also need the back assembly for the stand to attach to, Please give me any ideas before I forget about it again.
It would be great to gig with the real deal!
There really is no one “right” Tolex for a Continental, since Vox used at least a half dozen different vinyls of varying colors and textures over the years — none of which are available today, to my knowledge. A tech I know likes to recover Continentals with the Vox/Hiwatt-style black and red vinyls you can find at Mojotone.com. You can see an organ he recovered with those fabrics here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tD6imaFw7pQ The basketweave texture is very close to what Vox used on some of its 2-manual UK-built organs and on many Vox amps, so there’s some historic connection.
The back assembly? Do you mean the support braces? If so, NorthCoast sells them, and there is also a seller on eBay now selling replicas. Neither of these sellers is selling chrome-plated braces (which are expensive), so the finish won’t exactly match an original Vox stand.
On the missing 16 foot tones, have you tried adjusting the bias pots on the boards for those notes? The other likely possibilities are divider issues (mostly likely fixed by replacing a pair of transistors) or broken key contacts (a tough job). If you want help troubleshooting this, let me know.
Wow that’s awesome, I just bought the same one, power comes on but no sound. 🙁 can you point me in the right direction?
Congratulations! Great instrument!
If you get no sound at all, I would first suspect the large filter caps in the power supply have failed. (If they’re original, they are roughly 40 years beyond their expected lifetime.) To check that, measure the voltage at Pin 1 (the rightmost pin) on any of the tone generator boards. It should be -8.2 volts, or something close to that. If it’s way off that, your power supply needs attention.
(You can also open the power supply and look at the capacitors. They may be bulging or leaking fluid. And if they are large with UK brand names on them, they are probably original.)
Let me know how it goes.
Alan
Hey Alan-
Just recently picked up a Continental (with leslie for $300, no less!). The only issue is 2 broken key contacts on the highest A key. I’m trying the guitar string method, but really can’t get it after 2 hours of trying to thread it. Can you give me any tips on how to get this process quite right?
Thanks
Beau
Beau:
$300 with a Leslie? Wow! You must be living right!
The guitar string method works best if the broken key contact still has the loop section of the contact intact. If it does, you’ll want to slip the guitar string between the loop and the contact board (or through the loop), so that the loop temporarily holds the string in place so that you can then dab it with a little glue to secure it in place. If the broken contact does not have the loop, perhaps you could try putting a loop in the replacement contact, and try to thread the stub of the old contact through that loop to hold it in place.
But I recently restored five broken key contacts on a Continental with a far more effective method that does not require complete disassembly of the contact assembly. It involves swapping entire contact boards, so you would need to find some spares. Techs often have them, salvaged from organs that are beyond repair.
For more info, you can send me an email: alanDOTLenhoffATgmailDOTcom.
Alan
I have an English Vox Continental that I have in the shop and I’m wondering if I should sell it to the shop or if it’s worth keeping it was last functioning and played years ago I said it down and the power plug was lost so I don’t know whether to believe the man or not I’m wondering if you can help me with how much an original early English wooden key locks might fetch me or if I should just let it go
In the U.S., it’s probably worth roughly $600 to $2,000. $600 would be the price of one in bad cosmetic shape that has no accessories, doesn’t work and is missing some key parts or has been significantly altered. $2,000 would be for a fully functional organ in excellent cosmetic shape, with stand, volume pedal, stand case and all its original parts. The power cord should not be an issue. For a few dollars, you should be able to replace the round Bulgin power connector with an IEC plug (same plug you’d find on a desktop computer) and find out whether it works. I occasionally buy and restore Continentals. Where are you located?
Hi Alan, I had a question concerning my Vox V303E super continental about a drawbar issue , I sent a more detailed explanation to your email a week ago. wonder if you could me some advice? Hope to hear from you, happy holiday, thanks Dave
I’ve just responded by email.
Great work! It looks fantastic! My dad has Super Continental that I am helping him repair. You mention that the rocker switches can sometimes be repaired. I’m interested in hearing more about that. Thanks for sharing all of this!
Hi Jay:
Here are two repair tips for the switches that I saved from a discussion on the Yahoo combo organs list:
”The switches are “spring/clip” mounted by the chrome bracket comprising the switch housing itself. Usually what happens on these plastic rockers is one or more of the pivot points will break off, so I drill a hole through the rocker with a Dremel tool at the old pivot points, cut a piece of stock (brass tubing or even coat hanger) to length and thread it through the hole, then reassemble the switch (replace the spring and chrome bracket) and reassemble the organ. They are very simple switches by nature, and I have even repaired them while they are still in the organ by removing the broken rocker, drilling the hole, then cutting a length of bass guitar string and threading it through the hole for the new pivot, then “spring-loading” the switch pivot back into the switch housing one point at a time (use a thin screwdriver, so as not to scratch the chrome). The flex in the wire will allow the new “pivot” to snap back into position once installed under the bracket. It won’t come out again if you have cut the wire long enough, and the switch will work very smoothly.”
And from another poster:
“In both of my cases the outer casing of the switch had come apart at the corners. All the internal parts were loose but still there. Just putting them all back into position then holding the switch casing closed while reinforcing the outside with strong epoxy gave a working original switch that was sturdier than a new one. I advise against super glue, it is not as permanent a solution. Holding it together while the epoxy cures could be done with clothes pins or rubber bands for example. Just don’t apply it on the outside too thick or the switch won’t fit back into it’s hole. You can always sand down the epoxy on the sides and ends of the switch if you have to, just don’t weaken the corners.”
So don’t throw out those broken switches!
Alan
Great, thanks! I have been considering a similar repair, so now that I know it has worked for someone else, I have more confidence in the idea!
Thanks again for such a quick reply
Alan, I acquired a Super Continental last year, I had to replace a couple of the rocker switches , I found them online at a repair shop in L.A. called Busted Gear , he (his name is Rich) had replacement rocker switches for Vox Connies for $10/free shipping , except they were black, but looked the same , I think they were made better than the Italian originals plus they look good on a black organ, Plus I believe he gives some intructions as well. I have 2 replacements and one original white one. I tried a few times to repair one of the original white ones , it was too tedious for me. He might look into that.
I’ve seen those switches on their website: http://www.bustedgear.com/repair_Vox_continental_problems_4.html
They look like excellent functional replacements. I have used switches like that on two Continentals I sold to gigging musicians because I know they will be more reliable/durable than the originals. But for collectors, originality is important.
If you still have broken original switches and would like to sell them, please contact me.
Alan
I did hold on to the orginal switches, there’s a possiblity it might go up for sale next year , if it does and the buyer doesn’t care about the old switches, you’d be the first to know.
Thanks. I just hate to see these get discarded.
Alan
I have an original Jennings Vox Continental that was used by The Animals in a NYC concert. A capacitor has broken loose inside and I cannot tell where it came from. I have the schematic, but it is not apparent where the capacitor goes. Do you have any thoughts on this?
James:
I’d be glad to try to help. I will email you.
Alan
Hi Alan.
We’ve been getting a UK 1964 Conny back to working order, including replacing all the key springs to fix lose and sagging keys. We have two issues though. Firstly the power to the tone generator boards shows 7.5v only. The organ works but do you think the PSU needs tearing down and recapping? Second issue is noise whrn nothing is being played. We get a sort of ghost note and some hiss. The mechanism under the keys that has needle contacts and bus bars seems fine (no shorts or lost grounding pins) so any ideas? I thought grounding on the drawbar assembly but dont have anything to compare ours to.
Final question, do you have any idea where we could get a set of legs and a volume pedal?
Steve
>>Firstly the power to the tone generator boards shows 7.5v only. The organ works but do you think the PSU needs tearing down and recapping?>>
The TG boards don’t require a highly precise voltage to work properly. What you have should work fine. But if the power supply hasn’t be rebuilt since 1964, doing so would be a good investment in the future reliability of the organ. You are obviously far beyond the typical lifespan of electrolytic capacitors.
>>Second issue is noise when nothing is being played. We get a sort of ghost note and some hiss. The mechanism under the keys that has needle contacts and bus bars seems fine (no shorts or lost grounding pins) so any ideas? >>
I would start by checking to make sure that every key contact is making good contact with its ground busbar when its key is at rest. A single contact that fails to do so can cause all sorts of odd sounds. The solution is to gently bend the contact and/or clean it and its busbar.
>>do you have any idea where we could get a set of legs and a volume pedal?>>
Occasionally people sell replica legs, which often lack chrome plating and don’t look very nice in my opinion. Original legs are in very short supply. They pop up on eBay and Reverb.com occasionally, and tend to sell for high prices. Original pedals are found far more frequently on those sites, and also sell for high prices. In the US at least, the legs and pedals supplied originally with the UK-built organs are quite uncommonly seen, but the ones designed for the Italian-built organs show up far more frequently, and work fine with the UK models even though they aren’t what was originally supplied by Vox.
Good luck!
Alan