My System 300 and a HUGE mess of wires: HELP!

[musikfan]

Greetings everyone!

I now officially have my 300 in the basement along with two of the HUGE gyro cabs and two HC13's. However I have a mass of wires coming out of the back. If there is a thread for wiring gyros somewhere else on the forum (I did a search and could not find anything), please redirect me to it.

There are five main thick brown wires banded together coming out of the base of the organ, and then they eventually separate in to multiple sets of wires, some of which are the electrical connections for the gyros, and others which I assume get wired into the gyro cabs and also the HC's. I managed to separate them as best as I could without undoing the bands that are already on the brown wires coming out of the back of the organ at the base. The gyro cabs are labeled green and yellow. I figured out how to get the speakers spinning, but I am having problems with correctly wiring them. There are two screw terminals in each gyro cab with red and black wires coming to them from the cabinet. The screws are copper and silver. Then I have a set of black and white wires and also a set of red and brown that are both exposed from one of the heavier brown wires coming out of the back of the organ (Also, the amps in the back of the organ are labeled green and yellow as well). How do I wire the gyros? I tried connecting the red and white/red and black wires in multiple ways but I'm not getting any sound at all. If someone wants to private message me and then call me and talk me through it, that would be fine. Otherwise, I'll take the instruction that you might give in this thread.

Once the gyros are working, I want to hook up my HC12's or the HC 13's. Where do those get wired at?

Thank you everyone for any help.

[myorgan]

Craig,

Is it possible for you to share photos? They might help shortcut the process. Perhaps taking a photo of where the bundle of wires is connected inside the console, and the opposite end would help.

Michael

[musikfan]

Craig,

Is it possible for you to share photos? They might help shortcut the process. Perhaps taking a photo of where the bundle of wires is connected inside the console, and the opposite end would help.

Michael

Michael,

I'll get to work on some pics. In the meantime, I also discovered that the swell to great coupler is not working. Any ideas why that might not be functioning?

[musikfan]

wires coming out the back of the organ.

- - - Updated - - -



Terminals inside the gyro cabinet

- - - Updated - - -

OK folks. So I think I've figured some stuff out since my last post. There is a bundle of 5 thick brown wires. Two of them are the relay switches that each go to one of gyro cabs. The other two brown wires each go to one of the gyros to be screwed into the speaker terminals for sound. The 5th wire seems to be disconnected at both ends. Two of the thick brown wires have a piece of colored tape on them = one wire has yellow and the other has green - to match the gyro cabinet with the same color tape inside. Each of these brown wires has a black and white wire which I've connected to the copper and silver colored speaker terminal screws. I'm going to assume that the white is the positive and the black is the common. Please correct me if I'm wrong. So I connected each up and I've got this strange phenomenon - the one gyro is sounding with both flutes and mixures, but the other gyro only is sounding with flutes. Why is this? I know that the one internal organ amp is for flutes and the other amp is for the rest of the stops.

I still have a couple quirks to work out. I was able to get the swell to great coupler to work - I had to jiggle the tab and now it's fine. I don't know if there was dust on the contacts from not being used for a while?? However, the mixtures are not acting consistent. They were sounding fine and then they cut their sound and brightness in half out of nowhere...not sure what that is, either.

The one gyro cabinet works well with the on/off relay switch on the organ console. However, the other gyro cab motor runs non-stop whether the switch is on or off. The one gyro cab motor was already plugged into the square metal box . There are two plug outlets on the box and the motor is plugged into the outer one. On the other gyro, I had to plug in the motor so I just copied what I saw in the first gyro. However, it appears that the outer plug outlet is not working because when I plug the motor into that one, it won't run. But when I plug it into the second outlet it does run but won't shut off.

Finally, how do I connect my HC's on top of the gyros? I have no more speaker wires available in the bundle...at least from what I can see.....

Thanks everyone for your help.

[jbird604]

The only wiring diagrams I can find on the Allen tech site show nothing but a four-conductor control cable going to the gyro system (and that would be your black/white/red/brown all in one sheath). Plus the speaker wire, which would be a two-conductor cable for each channel.

For testing purposes, you can safely do away with ALL that wiring for now. None of it is required to make the organ play! Then just run a single simple two-conductor wire from the output terminal of each amp to an HC-12. That's it. Each amp wired to one HC-12, and forget the rest of it. That ought to make the organ play perfectly. If you still haven't figured out which are the active terminals on the HC-12, use the HC-13's instead. Not as much bass, but at least they will work.

As to your stops dropping out and such, as old as that organ is, you could have poor electrical contact at numerous spots. As you've already found, the stop switches themselves can be dirty or gunked up, as was your swell to great coupler. The mixture switch might be the same way. Clean these with a Q-tip dipped in alcohol. (Denatured, not Scotch ;-)

Also, the volume control pots on the amplifiers can be erratic, so it helps to turn each one back and forth a bit and then settle back about where they were, or where the factory marked with red paint. And the gyro brushes can be iffy as well. Everywhere there is a movable electrical contact of any kind there is the possibility of poor connectivity, which can cause erratic operation of some kind.

Even the sockets where the boards connect to the system are possible points for poor conduction. Eventually you'll want to remove each board, one at a time, and lubricate the card edge with Vaseline or at least wipe it with a cloth moistened in your favorite contact cleaner.

A MOS-1 system is nearly indestructible and will almost certainly work as long as the power supplies are set to the right voltages and the speaker wires are connected to the amps. The gyro business is extraneous, though you will probably want to get them working eventually.

I think you'll surely figure it all out pretty soon. But I'd start by just hooking the amps up straight to the HC-12's so you can see how it sounds.

[musikfan]

Picture on the left: What are these wires connected to? There's a number of terminals that are under a piece of clear "plastic-type" material...

Picture on the right: Just wanted you to see one of the two amps...this is the "yellow" one.

How do I get to the contacts to clean them with the denatured alchohol?

Should both amplifiers be at the same volume settings or should one be louder than the other?

THanks again for the information and help, all.

[jbird604]

Under that clear plastic cover, you see four wires coming out of that twisted bundle. Best I can tell, they are brown, black, white, and orange. Orange inside an Allen console generally carries unregulated 12 volts, and is the voltage used for operating relays and such. Black is always ground. The other two wires are there to perform some kind of control function, which can of course vary by model. They are not vital at this point. But for the motors to come on, the 12 volts and the ground must be traveling to the gyros. I'm guessing they go out on the white and black wires of your four- wire cable.

In a typical MOS-1 organ like that with remote speakers, the console sends 12 volts to activate a relay that turns on the AC power at the remote location. In your case, that power is used only for the motors. BTW, I can tell that your organ originally had the amplifiers in the gyro cabinets. How do I know that? The expression capacitors are not in their usual spot on top of the amps. Instead, if you were to remove the cover from the flat metal box in the floor of the console near the expression pedal, you would find the expression capacitors in there. But that is not important now. But that is the explanation for the peculiar screw-on connectors that carry the audio signal into each amp. If the organ had been built with amps in the console, those would've been ordinary RCA jacks and plugs.

I'm assuming that a control wire was used to turn the gyro motors off in the original setup. This had to be done without turning off the AC power in the gyro cabinet because the amps were originally there too, and they had to have power on them for the organ to play, even when the gyros were not turning. So that's why you have the other two wires.

But, to the point .... The only thing you need to hook up to make the organ play is a single pair of wires from each amp to a speaker. If I were you, I'd be testing it with the HC-12 or HC-13 speakers instead of the gyros, since the gyros can have problems that will confuse you. For example, the gyro brushes may not be making good contact, which might explain your mixtures coming and going. So at this point you should use your stationary speakers so you won't have to wonder about the gyro brushes until you get more stuff figured out.

So, ignore the four-conductor control wires. Just disconnect them at the console end, or else tape them off individually at the other end so none of them can touch anything else, not each other, not anything metal. If they have snap-on connectors, just leave them off and you're OK.

Why do I recommend this? You want to have the simplest possible setup at first. You want to test the organ and determine what works and what doesn't. So just find the other end of the two-conductor cables that connect to the output terminals of each amplifier. Should be marked with green tape and yellow tape. Connect the two lugs to the two terminals on the back of your HC-13 (or preferably your HC-12's, if you've been able to determine which two are the right ones). One speaker per channel for now.

Then you can try out the stops one at a time. If you find a stop that doesn't always come on, or that stutters when you turn it on, it needs the little leaf switches cleaned. Raise the top and look down at the stop brackets and you'll see the two small slivers of metal that touch the sides of a central tongue as you depress a tab. They are pretty good at cleaning themselves with each movement, but they can get gunk on them or dust and you can wipe it away with a Q-tip moistened in alcohol. If you bend them to far and they don't make contact with the tongue when the tab is down, just gently bend them back in place with a fingertip.

If you haven't figured out how to raise the top, and I assume you have a "flip-top" console with no roll top, you will find a screw underneath the keydesk on each side near the front that is holding the entire upper portion of the console in place. Remove these two small screws and the entire front will lift up like the hood of a car and you can see the stop brackets and the key contacts and other stuff inside.

[musikfan]

John,

Thanks so much for all this valuable information. I'll do what you recommended and then I'll get back and let you know what's happening.

Talk soon...

Update: Everything is starting to come together. My basement looks like a maze of wires running everywhere all over the floor. I'm going to separate the bundle of wires so that I clean things up and run them individually overhead to the different speakers.

A couple more issues that have come up: For some reason, the celeste on the swell will not go to the great when I activate the swell to great coupler. I'm not sure why this is happening as every other stop transfers without any problem. Also, I'm going to have to probably get in the console and tune a couple of the celeste notes. Some of them are out of tune and it creates a sound almost like an old accordian - not very nice!

The one gyro cabinet has some intermittent distortion issues whenever I play the full organ. I'm going to try the other gyro cabinet and see if it does the same thing (I've got that one disconnected at present since the motor won't shut off and it is also noisy when it runs).

Overall I'm very happy with the organ. It has all the stops that I've ever wanted to use. The memory capture action works very well and so does the card reader. All I need now is to eventually put some reverb into the system and I think I'll be set to go

One last thing: My one HC12 speaker is "buzzy". I'm not sure why because the other one does not do this at all, and I tested it on both amps. What would cause this?

[Piperdane]

. . . For some reason, the celeste on the swell will not go to the great when I activate the swell to great coupler. I'm not sure why this is happening as every other stop transfers without any problem. Also, I'm going to have to probably get in the console and tune a couple of the celeste notes. Some of them are out of tune and it creates a sound almost like an old accordian - not very nice!

The celeste, by design, does not couple on MOS organs.

[musikfan]

The celeste, by design, does not couple on MOS organs.

Well, that's good to know. I was thinking that something might be wrong with that.

Thanks for the info!

[jbird604]

A buzzy HC-12 could come from one of the drivers being defective. The woofer and both midranges are all vulnerable to foam rot. Check the surrounds of each cone to see if the foam is deteriorating. If these drivers have previously been repaired, it's possible that the surrounds were not properly put in place and are allowing the voice coil to rub on the magnet. Or if the surrounds deteriorated badly before being replaced, the coils may have damaged themselves by rubbing the magnet.

See if you can isolate the buzz to one of the individual drivers. Of course there are other things, even simple stuff like a screw or washer not firmly seated. Once you locate the source of the buzz the fix should be easy to find.

BTW, the gyros will still function as speakers even without being plugged into the AC, so on the one that is noisy and won't shut off, just don't plug it in.

[musikfan]

A buzzy HC-12 could come from one of the drivers being defective. The woofer and both midranges are all vulnerable to foam rot. Check the surrounds of each cone to see if the foam is deteriorating. If these drivers have previously been repaired, it's possible that the surrounds were not properly put in place and are allowing the voice coil to rub on the magnet. Or if the surrounds deteriorated badly before being replaced, the coils may have damaged themselves by rubbing the magnet.

See if you can isolate the buzz to one of the individual drivers. Of course there are other things, even simple stuff like a screw or washer not firmly seated. Once you locate the source of the buzz the fix should be easy to find.

BTW, the gyros will still function as speakers even without being plugged into the AC, so on the one that is noisy and won't shut off, just don't plug it in.

John, I have to look more in-depth at the HC12 speaker, but from what I can hear, it's coming from the midrange area, not the woofers. I only hear it in the mid-tones, not the deep bass. How do I get to the speaker to examine the insides to check for other related issues?

[jbird604]

Find a note on the organ that causes the speaker to buzz, then block the note down so you can put your ear close to the drivers. You may immediately find the source of it just by listening up close.

If one of the midrange drivers is buzzing, you may need to re-do the foam surround. But we'll tackle that if and when necessary! Maybe it will be a screw loose somewhere on the outside of one of the drivers.

[myorgan]

One last thing: My one HC12 speaker is "buzzy". I'm not sure why because the other one does not do this at all, and I tested it on both amps. What would cause this?

Craig,

Unless I recall incorrectly, didn't you have this issue with your other organ? I also recall switching the amplifier caused the problem to move. If it is a speaker mid-range, there are 2 presently for sale on *Bay. Don't remember if they're $40 each or as a pair. They are the correct impedance for an HC-12 (4Ω).

Michael

[musikfan]

Craig,

Unless I recall incorrectly, didn't you have this issue with your other organ? I also recall switching the amplifier caused the problem to move. If it is a speaker mid-range, there are 2 presently for sale on *Bay. Don't remember if they're $40 each or as a pair. They are the correct impedance for an HC-12 (4Ω).

Michael

Michael,

yes, the speaker also buzzed on the last organ as well. I'm going to take some time in the near future and probably investigate the speaker to see what's up. I'll try the recommendations that John made and see where that takes me. I love my HC12's because they have such a wonderful low end response. They handle the 32' stops on the organ nicely. I really don't want to part with either of them if I don't have to. The HC13's are nice for the upper end and handle the mixtures and high flutes very nicely as well.

I have decided to keep one of the gryo speakers. Ironically, it will be the one that has the noisy motor. This one handled the full range of the organ with no distortion. I hooked it up to the amplifier that handles the flutes and it really does well. Now if I can just get the motor to stop being noisy. It's almost like a clicking sound. I'm not sure if it's the belt or the actual motor. I have to do some experimenting. This is also the same gyro that will not turn off when I press the "gryo off" tab on the organ console. That really doesn't bother me because I'd rather keep it on all the time anyway as it provides some movement to the sound - especially in my dead basement. I really need to get some reverb!