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**samibe** · 03-17-2019, 05:22 PM

Issue 2 sounds like the amp is working for the reverb but the main channel feed is not getting through

For issue 5, have you floored the expression pedals?

Your speaker wire runs sound a bit long and may need some adjusting to not have weird issues.

A lot of the intermittent issues may be resolved by cleaning and reseating plugs in the audio lines between the cage and the amp as well as the cage card edges (John's usual advice).

**John Vanderlee** · 03-17-2019, 06:44 PM

Also, on any ADC organ I found it's pot.. pots.. pots! Those little potentiometers in the card cage, and the trems , and the mixer pre-amp, need to be carefully and vigorously rotated back and forth after you give them a squirt of contact cleaner right into the adjustment slot. You'll be amazed how many things come back!

**myorgan** · 03-17-2019, 07:37 PM

ISSUE #1: -Mute relays. Either the organ was already turned on when you arrived and tried it, you possibly connected the amplifier racks incorrectly, or they stopped working as a result of the transit.

ISSUE #2:As already stated-pots, pots, pots!!! They need to exercised on the cage cards. Be careful, though.

ISSUE #3: Is it ALL pitches of those notes, or just select ones? It sounds like it could either be the reed switches (if you have them) at the back of the keys, key contacts (if they're leaf contacts) can be fixed by sliding a new dollar bill between the contacts, or something has become disconnected in the matrix, which is highly unlikely. Please see if you can provide more specific detail regarding exactly which notes on which notes.

ISSUE #4: As already stated-pots, pots, pots!!! They need to exercised on the cage cards. Be careful, though.

ISSUE #5: As already stated-pots, pots, pots!!! They need to exercised on the cage cards. Be careful, though. Perhaps the best advice I ever received (from John) was to initially set each of the pots to 1/2 way through it's travel path before starting the voicing procedures. That advice alone has shortened the process by what seems like lightyears!

ISSUE #6:Check the plug in the floor of the organ (trace the cord), and that might be the cause. Otherwise, re-do the splices.

My next opportunity to work on the organ (probably late this week), I was going to try to isolate/trouble-shoot the AMP #2 volume issue, and assuming it's amp related, remove that amp and start checking to see what might be up with it. Since there are probably relay issues in the amp as well, I'll check that. Time permitting, I also plan to open the cage and take a look.

Take care of the cage first. You probably won't have to take care of the amp at all.

Glad the new organ is working, and I know our ADC-6000 fills a 1,400-1,600 seat auditorium with no issues at all. I'm sure there's enough there.

Thank you so much for sharing your trials and travails regarding the move.

Michael

**jbird604** · 03-18-2019, 05:48 PM

The chain of dead keys on the great could be a break in the keying matrix at the rear of the great keyboard. Look at the leaf switches and the diodes and look for a break somewhere in the lowest octave (since the bottom D sounds). Follow the wires or traces from the working note to the first dead note and you will find your problem. May have to use a meter. Could also be one of the small white wires has come unsoldered from the bass end of the keyboard where the three manuals loop together. More remotely, could be a faulty connection at the USCM board where the large bundles of white wires from the manuals and pedals attach via one of those long narrow multi-pin plugs. Unplug and plug back in firmly.

Be sure to swap the two swell inputs at the amplifier to determine if the problem really is the amp. If you move the RCA plugs and the formerly dead stops now sound, then yes, it's the amp (or speaker or cable or something in between). Otherwise, it's in the audio path ahead of the amp.

Wholesale failure of the amplifier relays is highly uncommon. Much more likely that the delay circuit that supplies the delayed 12 volts to unmute the amps has gone awry. Or that there is a grounding problem in the audio path, which, come to think of it, is the most likely issue.

People make fun of me for using VASELINE to lube up all the connections inside any Allen organ (even in the cage backplane sockets, and EPROM sockets too). But I stand by my chemical. It not only instantly removes corrosion and grime, after wiping it leaves behind a molecule-thin layer that eases insertion of the boards and chips into their sockets and RCA plugs into their jacks. Other stuff is more expensive and has a cool smell, but I don't think anything else does the job as well as Vaseline. (I have no stock in Chesbrough-Ponds that I know of.)

That organ should be LOUD for sure, but may have been voiced softly in its former home for some reason. Once you get the pots on the TG boards exercised and go through a voicing procedure, you should be able to make it roar if you want it to.

**Rick Jay** · 03-23-2019, 04:49 PM

Hi All,

Again, I'll start off with a GREAT BIG THANK YOU to all for your help. I was able to get some time to work on the organ for a bit on Tuesday and today (Saturday). My son and I cleaned all of the cards in the cage: the card connectors and the pots. I was also pleased to find out that that slot all the way to the right showed NO SIGNS of any corrosion from the leaking battery issue. This organ does have the remote battery installed with a a red & black wire running up to the cage. This tells me that the change was made BEFORE there was an issue.

So, here's what we were able to accomplish.

ISSUE #1: We didn't really do much to address the start up "thump". However, we did notice that the left back of amplifiers (Channels 1-4) seemed to be the more dominant source, and it seems like two of those channels are the biggest culprits. I'll probably remove the two amplifier units and check out the relays and give the pots a cleaning as I can hear a scratching when adjusting a few of them.

ISSUE #2: I believe cleaning the cards in the cage fixed this problem. I think the Channel 2 stops are voiced a bit softer than I'd prefer, so when I finally get these other gremlins worked out and can get to voicing it for the sanctuary, things will be good. Issue #2 is SOLVED.

ISSUE #3: We didn't have time to troubleshoot this, but thanks to John's explanation above, we DID observe and figure out what he was saying! We didn't see any broken/desoldered wires with our cursory and quick inspection. Actually, my son figured out the matrix connections for the keyboards before I did and how the D, F# & Bb notes are "grouped" together. Ahhhh....the benefit of a young brain and good eyes! LOL So now we know where to look and what to look for, so this will probably be our next area to address.

ISSUE #4: The problem with the stops on the Choir has been solved. We realized the stops that were intermittently working were all on Amplifier Channel #5. They worked when we started the test, then cut out, faded back in...then out...classic signs of a loose/bad connection. So while my son played some notes, I wiggled cords in the back and discovered one of the input cables to the Alesis Reverb using for Channels 5 & 6 was not pushed in all of the way. So, we ended up cleaning ALL of the cord ends going to coming from the Alesis Reverb units. In fact, we cleaned up all of the RCA type audio connections we saw as well. ISSUE #4 is SOLVED.

ISSUE #5: I believe this is solved too. Cleaning the pots might have been a help. I also think it might have partly been operator inexperience. Today, it definitely seemed louder to both my son and I, and with the Expression maxed out or the Tutti's engaged, there was plenty of volume. Considering 2 of the 7 amps really weren't contributing to the output before, I believe that was a contributing factor too. So, I'm pretty sure I can say ISSUE #5 is SOLVED.

ISSUE #6: ISSUE #6 is SOLVED. I should just leave it at that. LOL My pride doesn't want me to post this, but I'm sure you'll all appreciate the humor in it. So, my son and I were playing with the Choir stops working on ISSUE #4 and he mentions..."Oh yeah, we have to work on the light too." To which I say "Well, yes, but that's not high up on my list. It should be easy, we'll just check to make sure there's voltage at the bulb." Then I said something like "Funny, I didn't see a switch on it, otherwise we could check that." He was standing to my right and looks at the light and says "Oh, like this?!?" YUP!!!! There's the switch! Inset into the right hand side of the music stand wood frame. Not visible from the playing position, but plain as day...once you know where to look for it! LOL With everything else going on, I really didn't notice the switch and I was always approaching the organ from the left side because of the way it's situated in the church. The light on the pedalboard came on as the organ powered up, so I just assumed the music rack light did the same. DUH!!!! Oh well, live and learn. LOL

So, 4 of the 6 issues have apparently been resolved. Next opportunity we'll attack ISSUE #3 and I'll probably remove the amps and bring them home to clean the pots and test/replace the relays.

Again, thanks for all of the helpful ideas. I'll keep you in the loop as things (hopefully) progress.

~Rick

**jbird604** · 03-24-2019, 04:52 PM

Good work and good news all around! Keep after it and you'll have it all worked out soon.

**Rick Jay** · 03-30-2019, 03:30 PM

Hello All,

Update time again. My son and I were able to spend a couple of hours this afternoon and were pretty productive.

ISSUE #3: Once again, John's advice was dead-on. I had my son ohm-out the path between the working "D" and the first non-working "F", and sure enough, there was an open. Seeing as my son is studying Electrical Engineering Technology, I let him do a lot of the work. Well, that and his eyes are better. LOL He traced out a few things and was a bit puzzled about his continuity checks. When he explained his findings to me, I told him that the reason he received a positive continuity check with the leads placed in one orientation, but an "open" when he tested by placing the leads between two other points is probably because the solder joint is "cold" and the pressure of the probe completed the circuit. But when he put the lead elsewhere, the cold joint opened. Anyway, heating the joint with the soldering iron and adding a bit of solder cured the problem and my son learned some more troubleshooting tricks. :-)

During this process, the G# in the middle of the same keyboard seemed to be a bit intermittent. It would work sometimes, and not others. Again, we heated the end of the diode which connects to the matrix board and that apparently resolved that issue too. So, I'm pretty confident we can say ISSUE #3 is solved.

ISSUE #4: I thought we fixed this last time, but again, I noticed that all of the stops on Channel 5 would intermittently play. We had thought this was a loose connection to one of the Alesis Reverb units, but apparently the issue was with the input of the Alesis unit, NOT the cable. So, for now, seeing as this is a 7 channel organ and there are 4 stereo Alesis reverb units, I connected the Channel 5 signal into the unused remaining Alesis Reverb channel. Not a complete solution, but it works for now.

ISSUE #1: The "thump" on start up. I can thank Michael & John for this tip. Thanks to a post John had made a number of years ago when someone had been given and organ, but there was no sound, he described how to check the delay voltage for the mute relays on an ADC model organ. So, when I put the DMM on the delayed voltage, I discovered that there was voltage there immediately upon start up. I confirmed this at the amplifiers as well as right at the power supply.

The verify that there still wasn't a problem with the relays inside the amps, I created a jumper system so that I could manually apply the voltage to the mute-relays on the amps after the organ had been turned on. So...organ was turned on...nice & quite...then I connected the alligator clip jumper and all was well. So I'm going to say that the amplifier relays are probably OK.

While there are several solutions, based upon what John had said in his post that I had found, I decided that an add-on delay unit is probably the best option. (I was contemplating digging into power box of the Allen to see if I could repair the original delay board, but I will defer that to some later time, or just forget about it. :) ) I figured it'd be easy to rig up a 555 with a relay to perform the delay. But when I got home, I found a turn-on solid-state delay relay on Amazon (with Prime) for about $8. Not even worth trying to home-brew something for that little amount. I ordered it and it should be here on Monday. So, I'm hoping once that gets installed, I'll be able to declare this issue as solved, too. For the time being, I actually left my "jumper wires" leading outside the back panel so that I can turn the organ on and manually make the connection. But seeing as the relay should arrive soon, I should be able to wire it in real soon.

I DID get a chance to play it for a little while today, too. Seeing as I'm hoping to debut the organ at the Palm Sunday service, it goes without saying that I'm going to have to play "The Palms" at some point in the service. So, I dug out the music and ran through it a couple of times. Good thing. Man...I've got A LOT to learn. I guess the first thing I should do is reprogrammed the pistons to my preferences. For today I was just manually pulling out stops and using the crescendo pedal but it's going to take a long time to remember which stops I want to use and where they're located. That said, I really did like some of the sounds I was getting out of the organ today. I haven't tamed the beast by any stretch of the imagination, but today I actually felt like I'm making some progress. My feet are adjusting to the AGO pedal board from the 25+ years of the "princess" pedal board of our TC-1. I also realized I need "organ shoes". My everyday walking shoes are just too wide to play the pedals AND navigate the expression/crescendo pedals. That, or maybe I'm just too old to compensate for it. LOL When I was younger, I remember playing organs at other churches and the organists would have their "special shoes" off to the side, OR they would bring their "organ shoes" with them separately. I thought that was odd, as I could play with ANY shoes. But, now, I'll be one of them too! LOL

I can't say "Thank You" enough to all of you. I really appreciate your helpful hints and encouragement.

~Rick

**myorgan** · 03-30-2019, 07:48 PM

ISSUE #4: I thought we fixed this last time, but again, I noticed that all of the stops on Channel 5 would intermittently play. We had thought this was a loose connection to one of the Alesis Reverb units, but apparently the issue was with the input of the Alesis unit, NOT the cable

Rick,

You're on the right track. Eliminating one thing at a time, over time, will eventually lead to a permanent solution. I hope you have taken the time to exercise the pots as well on that particular cage card. Another thought I had was wondering if your organ has antiphonal relays. I know one of my antiphonal relays on another organ went bad, so it took me through cage cards, amplifiers, and lots of other things until I finally arrived at the real issue-the antiphonal relay. Bottom line, it took months to finally isolate the problem. I would think I had solved the issue, then it would rear its ugly head again!

Best with the permanent solution! Thank you so much for sharing your saga.

Michael

**jbird604** · 03-31-2019, 05:15 AM

Thanks for the update. As Michael notes, you just have to be persistent to work everything out, especially on these larger models where there are so many separate systems at work.

Please post a link to the delay unit you found. I might be interested in ordering that to have on hand. We see the delay board failure now and then, and my solution has been a home-brew delay made of nothing more than a couple of resistors, a couple of large caps, and a relay with a 110v coil. It works, but it has to be hand-built and it occupies a bit of real estate inside the console. Would love to investigate the unit you discovered on Amazon.

**Rick Jay** · 04-02-2019, 01:47 PM

RELAY UPDATE:

The relays arrived in yesterday. I decided I'm going to use the 12V relay for this task and tested it out.

The relays are (supposedly) Omron H3Y-2 . Again, I purchased a 12V and a 120V version, but I have decided to try the 12V unit. I'm going to power the relay from the main +12V supply and then take the Delayed +12V supply (which is "on" as soon as the organ turns on, there IS no delay, which is why I'm doing all this) and connect that to the relay contacts to power the circuits which need the delay.

The relay has an adjustable 0-30 second delay with the graduated dial on top. It's a DPDT output and was $7.99 with Prime and includes the mounting socket. I plan to install it tonight, if I get the opportunity. Here's the Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The datasheets for this series relay are here: https://industrial.omron.us/en/media...849-113625.pdf . I tested it and I've attached the Scope Screenshots of the Turn On and Turn Off characteristics of the output. The Turn-On looks a little "bouncy" but all is quieted down within about 1.25 mSec of the relay engaging. Both the Turn-On and Turn-Off traces were done with no load on the relay contacts. An additional load of the +12V Delayed circuits should dampen these transients. The Turn-Off trace verifies what the datasheet states and that is it should be off within 1 mSec. Again, any load on the output should help this output to drop even faster. I'm assuming these characteristics will be sufficient. Hopefully I'll know for sure tonight.

If, for some reason the Main +12V line stays energized a bit longer after the organ is shut down and transients have time to make it to the speakers, then I'll switch to the 120V relay which should shut-off as soon as the organ power switch is turned off.

Ok, I wanted to post this now 'cause my next couple of days will probably be busy. If for some reason I run into trouble tonight with the install, I'll post a quick update.

~Rick

P.S. Dang!!! Had an emergency repair around the house I had to deal with when I got home from work tonight. Friday afternoon will probably be my next opportunity to install the relay. Stay tuned..... :-)

**toodles** · 04-02-2019, 07:33 PM

I just received an MDS Theatre III Allen, and the delayed 12V circuit has also failed in it, as in yours. That voltage is on immediately upon powerup, with a resulting loud thump, and the police siren sounds, too. My plan was to do exactly as you suggest--use an Omron H3Y-2 timer to delay switching the 12V to the mute voltage line--just haven't had the chance to install it yet.

The delay voltage in this organ is accomplished by what I consider to be an overly complicated circuit--it takes 120VAC through a bridge rectifier into a 555 timer circuit via a photoelectric isolator; the 555 output then drives an emitter-follower transistor with a heat sink. The output of the E/F drives reed relays, one in each channel; of the ADC amplifier, with a whopping current of 18 mA for each relay. The contacts on the relay are normally closed, and short the audio input to ground at the input of the amplifier stage, when the delayed voltage gets to that relay, the contacts open and the channel can speak.

Rather than using the 120VAC timer to do the switching, you might just use a wall wart power supply to drive the 12 VDC coil--that's my plan if the internal Allen supply maintains the 12V too long after power down.

FYI, thanks to JBird for his original suggestion to use a small capacitor and series drive resistor to create the delay--essentially making a time delay relay out of components. The use of the H3Y timer permits using their handy socket, providing for easy to connect terminals. Note the new price of this timer is about $100--if I had to pay list price for the Omron timer, I would probably do what JBird suggests. The availability of this timer as a surplus item is the reason you can get them for less than $10. I'm using the 10 Second version.

**jbird604** · 04-03-2019, 06:05 AM

TBH, I've never looked around for an alternative to the Allen delay circuit other than my "proprietary" creation IMG_20190403_0001.pdf . I first made my little home-brew totally passive circuit about 25 years ago when an Allen in a small church had it's delay circuit knocked out by a power surge (it seems to be a fairly delicate circuit). I wanted to build a replacement that was bullet-proof!

It's simple, and the turn-on delay is only a second or so, but it works for every organ I've tried it in. The turn-off muting is instantaneous, so it stifles all shut-down transients perfectly, as the relay on the switched AC opens in a millisecond when the power is turned off. The 100K resistor shunt assures that the capacitor will discharge when the power is off. Faster discharge would be provided by a smaller resistor, and even 10K probably wouldn't keep the circuit from working, and would possibly provide a more reliable discharge. I just haven't played around with it much.

I suppose the start-up delay would be longer if the 5000 mfd cap were larger and the input 50 ohm resistor increased to 100 ohm. But you can't have too large a resistor there, as the voltage might drop too low to pull in your mute relays at some point.

Not sure if I ever published the schematic. Here's a PDF.

**toodles** · 04-03-2019, 09:53 AM

I think the time delay relays are genuine Omron parts--I used to work for their US branch--and I suspect the overall sales volume of such parts is low enough that it really wouldn't pay to counterfeit them. Most industrial timing is now done with programmable logic controllers, and discrete timers are used less. The sockets provided with the bargain units, though, seem to be a copy rather than genuine Omron, as they do not carry any UL/CSA markings, which the genuine articles do. In any case, for 12 VDC operation, they should not a cause for concern.

The list price for the new products is not really that crazy--any timer series has to be made in 6 voltages for the global market (12, 24, 100, 120, 220, and 240 volts; 100 is for Japan, 220 for Europe, and 240 for Australia). and dozens of time ranges; in addition, the H3Y series is offered in 4 versions--DPDT, 4PDT, both in an on-delay only and an on-delay/one shot version. Multiply it out, and it becomes costly to have the different inventory, packaging, and marking--plus costs to maintain finished goods for quick delivery. Omron and their distributors will provide substantial discounts to OEMS purchasing in volume.

The low cost items on eBay and Amazon are most likely distributor surplus sold as a lot to non-authorized distributors who buy whole lots of such merchandise at truly sell-out prices. Parts Express, as an example, does this with OEM speakers and good bargains are often available in such situations.

**Rick Jay** · 04-07-2019, 11:16 AM

Hi All,

I finally got a chance to wire in the time delay relay, and here's the results.

On start-up, it seems to work pretty well. I get a single "thump" when the relay kicks in. Definitely a noticeable "thump", but not the cascading thunderous problem present without the relay. Is a single "thump" normal, or should the amps kick in almost silently?

When shutting off the organ, there are still a few loud, multiple thumps from the speakers. I'm not sure if the "thumps" on power off are any fewer than when I didn't have the relay in place. I didn't have time to compare.

I'm guessing the +12V supplies keep sufficient voltage on power-down to keep this relay energized and the 12VDC power relay isn't cutting off delayed +12VDC quite as quick as I had hoped. I'm going to try the 120VAC relay I had purchased instead and power that from the main power supply switch. Then when the AC power gets cut, the relay will power down and cut-off the delayed +12V to the Mute Relays about 1 millisecond later.

I did notice there were 3 wires connected to the delayed +12VDC supply. One going to the amplifier mute relays and two going elsewhere. I didn't get a chance to follow them to see what circuits they went to. I connected all three on the delayed +12VDC relay output.

Today was a rushed day, though, and I barely had enough time to wire in the 12VDC relay. We share our Sanctuary with another church and they started gathering just about the time I was running through my tests. Hopefully Tuesday I'll get another shot at it, unless I can sneak away for a bit tonight.

On the plus side, I DID do a little rehearsal with our "put-together choir" using the new organ. I was at least proficient enough at it to NOT drown them out (only a few voices in the choir) AND not do anything TOO wrong in the way of stop selection. Although, that pedal board and expression/crescendo pedals are going to take some getting used to. I have my walking shoes on today and those just WILL NOT DO! LOL

Next week will be the organ's debut for a service. I need to get some serious practice time on it this week. I have committed myself to playing "The Palms" during the service for Palm Sunday. In years past, it usually it only takes a few run-throughs to dust off the cobwebs from one year to the next, but on this new organ, it's going to take more than that. ;-)

Well, if anyone has any additional input or ideas on the relay issue, I'd be interested in hearing them.

As always, thanks for reading and offering your support & advice.

~Rick

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