How do we connect speakers to ADC-2160?

[wilrobbinsct]

We have an ADC-2160 in our church. We want to move the speakers but the existing wires are too short. I ran 4 new wires to the desired locations, added fork terminals to them and connected them to the same location as the removed wires. No Sound. I am familiar with electronics and stereos, home theaters and such but this has me completely baffled.
For the time being I reconnected the original wires and taped them to the new wires. One channel is working but the other is not. I don't know much about organs (probably pretty obvious) but is there some switch that turns the second channel on? have to have at least one set selected to get any sound. Thanks in advance! Puzzled

[Organkeys Jones]

There is no switch unless there are antiphonal relays. Is your 2160 two channel or four? The stock 2160 is two channel. I suppose you have HC-15 Allen cabinets. Did you run 4 wires or two pairs of wires? When you say "connected them to the same location" do you mean both console & speaker cabinet? Is there an antiphonal relay? That can actually turn speakers off with tabs on the stoprail. If no relay, there would be a well-labeled speaker terminal strip in the floor of the console. Maybe you didn't re-attach to exactly the same terminals?? Re-check.

I always try to have no splice from the amp to the speaker. (Can't always be avoided.) Perhaps post a photo of your connections.

[myorgan]

Wilrobbinsct,

Welcome to the Forum! I hope you continue to participate here for a time to come.

I wish I had known you had this issue. I just drove past you today on my way back home and could have stopped to help. Do you have the ability to post photos?

Do you have ADC or S-100 amplifiers? Did you observe the same polarity when connecting the speakers? Are you sure you connected the proper pairs and didn't mix them in any way? Is the wire you ran of adequate gauge to handle the extra distance? What is commonly known as ZIP cord is probably inadequate.

Again, welcome to the Forum, and I know we can be of help to you here with enough time and conversation.

Michael

[wilrobbinsct]

thanks for your replies. I will take some pics and send later on.

[wilrobbinsct]

I don't know how to tell channels but if each channel. Is a channel a amplifier output or a speaker connection? Based on the message since I have 2 terminal strips I presume I do not have any antiphonal relays..whatever they are. We have large speakers about 3' tall, about 18" wide and about 16" deep that came with the organ. I think from what I have read they are the HC-15 speakers as you state.
Thanks myorgan...I didn't know I had a problem! I do not know if I have ADC or s-100 amps, I observed the same polarity for sure but if you read below I think my stupidity may become immediately apparent! LOL. I have 100' runs of 18/2 wire. that is bigger than what is currently connected to the speakers.
Thanks for the welcome...yup, probably will be participating if can be of any help.

Funny thing on Sunday, all sound stopped after 2 bars while the organist was warming up..will be going by wed afternoon to see whats up and test my connection error theory.


Ok, so we have 2 of these terminal blocks mounted on the floor of the organ cabinet. this is the left most one. The 2 brown cables each with 1 black and 1 white conductor are the speaker wires for 1 set of speakers. I think I may know where I went wrong. I disconnected ALL wires at the leftmost (upper in the picture) pair of terminals but on closer inspection it appears that I should have left the blue and the black wires on that pair of terminals and connected my "red" and "white" wires respectively, hooking the other speaker to the location where the black and green wires go. Gheez, must have been dehydrating/heat stroking not to see this..the other set of speakers goes to the rightmost terminal block but that is a single 4 conductor cable. I think this will correct my wiring problem. If I am still confused, feel free to let me know! Also for

[myorgan]

Wilrobbinsct,

A channel is one complete audio signal path from tone generation (probably in the cage), to the amplifier, to the speaker. Other devices can be added somewhere in that path, but what I gave is the simplest description. My guess is that the blue wire goes to one of the amplifiers (with a mate of another color-maybe black or brown?), and the green wire goes to the other amplifier (with a mate of another color-maybe black?). The orange and white wire on the bottom provide the power to the antiphonal relay.

The picture you show is actually a two-channel antiphonal relay board. Those white cubes on it are the relays. There are probably two amplifiers (or one amplifier with two channels on it) in the organ providing the amplification. On the end of the board, those towers with the sliding sleeve control the volume of the antiphonal speakers. I believe high is louder, and low is softer.

The terminals on your relay are marked Main Sp1, Com (Common)1, and Ant1. The signal comes from the amplifier outputs, and the pair of wires are connected to the terminal strip. The numbers and letters (1J and 2J) refer to the amplifiers. The speakers should be labeled similarly (1J and 2J).

If you do not wish to use antiphonal speakers, you can actually bypass the terminal strip on the antiphonal relay, and connect the speakers directly to the amplifier output terminals. I would only recommend that for diagnostic purposes, though.

The speaker wire for a 100' run should be (at absolute minimum) 16/2 ga. Personally, I use 14/2 ga. for runs of 100'. 18/2 is too small, and you'll not have the power you need, as it will be lost the longer the run is. It can also overheat the amplifiers. I would only use 18/2 for 20' or so. In your photo, it shows the ends of the original Allen cable-a pair of black and white wires, with a brown jacket. Your cable should be no smaller than those wires.

This picture shows an S-100 amplifier (https://organforum.com/gallery/displ...um=36&pid=1138). This picture shows something like an ADC amplifier, but it is an AM-100 which uses the same chassis (https://organforum.com/gallery/displ...um=36&pid=1137). From those comparisons, you should be able to identify your amplifier.

I hope this answers some of your questions.

Michael

[John Vanderlee]

And I might add, from experience, DO NOT run long 4 wire cables(in one jacket) from a pair of amplifiers. The amps will interfere with each other, oscillate, and pop a breaker or worse. If you find an existing condition like that you must add ferrite cores for suppression. I learned all this last year the hard way.

[wilrobbinsct]

Thanks Michael and John!
So since I have 2 of these strips and each one has 2 channels I have a 4 channel system. right?
As for the gauge of the wire what is in the brown jacket looks a little smaller than the 18 gauge speaker wire that I used but will take your advice and get something heavier, I do not want to destroy my amps! I presume the amps have a fuse or breaker.
I think I have the ADC Amp.

I will be going over after work tomorrow and working on this so will post some more pics and such later in the day.

Again I want to thank you all for your input!

[myorgan]

No problem. I just hope we've helped a little. Yes, it does appear you have a 4-channel instrument, with the possibility of an additional 4 antiphonal speakers.

BTW, when it comes to wire gauges, the smaller the number, the larger the gauge. So, 14 ga. is actually larger than 18 ga. Hope that helps.

Michael

[wilrobbinsct]

Here are some pics.
Clearly is a 4 channel system, not sure what the rca jacks are feeding into the amp but will figure that out somewhere along the way.

Thanks. Aware of gauge/size relationship.

So I went back and if you look at the terminal blocks for the speakers its pretty apparent that I had lost my mind while working in the heat of the church.
Hooking speakers up to a unfed terminal can clearly not generate any sound!
Hooking to sources together can be disastrous if your circuit breaker is not working but fortunately ours was up to the task!

It is very unlike me to mess something up that bad but I have learned a lot with apparently no damage. phew! Hey I am doing something for the church so can say thank God!

I properly connected everything and it is working beautifully!

will continue doing a little research as I am becoming fascinated by this device!

Thanks again!

Wil

[myorgan]

Wil,

Glad we could help you find the error in your ways.;-)

As far as the pictures you posted,

1. I believe the first picture is of the reverberation controls in the organ. The silver cage behind the mixing board is the "guts" of the system.
2. You do, indeed, have a 4-channel ADC amplifier. Do be careful not to overload the amplifier, as that chassis with 4 amplifier modules can generate a lot of heat.
3. Your 3^rd picture is the Capture Power Supply for the capture action.
4. The 4^th picture, as you know is of the two speaker/antiphonal relay boards. Directly behind that is the AC Power Distribution box for the organ.
5. Your photo of the back of the organ shows several other boards, one of which appears to be a Brass Choir or Bass Coupler board (the small one in the middle). I don't have my reference photos readily available, but someone else can identify the other boards inside the back of your organ.

BTW, I would be extremely curious to see the swing-out panel on the left, and what is on the backside of that panel. Maybe later.

Thank you for documenting and sharing your experience with this organ.

Michael

[jbird604]

What you have is a 2160 that was originally sold with only two audio channels, but has been upgraded to four channels. See the red and black stereo patch cable that runs from the mixer board to the amp chassis? That is not original, but if the changeover to four channels was done correctly, the red and black RCA plugs will carry the two additional channels.

If the channeling was done in the conventional manner, you should have the great and pedal stops on channels 1 and 4, the swell stops on channels 2 and 3. But it may not be done that way, since it was done in the field by an unknown person. As I recall, there are some signal wires that are normally moved to different RCA jacks when the system is changed from two channels to four, but I could be wrong. Also, there are some DIP switches on the mixer board that must be properly set for four-channel operation, and I can't tell if that was done or not. But at the very least, you should have some stops coming from each of the four speakers, though if the DIP switches are not set correctly, some stops may actually come from two speakers, which will make voicing difficult or impossible. But worry about that later.

So, IF you connect four speakers to the four outputs (though I don't believe you have done so, from what I see in the photo of the antiphonal relays), and if everything else about the organ is operating normally, you should hear great/pedal stops through two of the speakers and swell stops through the other two. Be sure that the Main Off or Antiphonal On tabs are not programmed into the combinations, as it would kill the sound completely if the Main Off tab were pressed accidentally.

That's about all I can tell you from this distance. If I were there, I could do a through trace for you. I had a 2160 in my home for a while, and I sold several of those back in the 80's when I was an Allen salesman. There isn't much I can tell you to do other than to FOLLOW THE MAINTENANCE procedures and voicing routines for the MADC-2/3 models that have been spelled out in various threads on this forum. An organ of that age, and especially one that appears to be rather dusty inside, certainly needs the complete procedure performed on it. And the fact that it was modified after shipment by an unknown person makes it even more important that a complete checkup and voicing procedure be followed.

But you are surely on the right track, as far as hooking up the speakers. It is almost fool-proof. The four speakers simply need to be wired to the four Main outputs on the antiphonal relays, and the organ should play normally.

If not, there is something wrong, but it could be as simple as the pots on the tone generator board needing exercise. Or it could be much more serious and require a lot more time and skill than most non-techs are able to provide. This is a fine organ though, and deserves to be properly set up and well voiced.

[wilrobbinsct]

Michael, the back side of the swing panel is the first photo. I got a little out of sequence when I posted the pics.
John, I will check out the procedures and take a vacuum to it. FYI it was fully serviced 3 years ago by the folks in the area who do these. I would have to look up the records to see what exactly was done.
thank you all again!

Wil

[myorgan]

Wil,

John may want to weigh in on this, but I seem to remember somewhere that the static created by running a vacuum over a logic board could cause issues. Would it be best to use something like a straw whisk brush, or other brush that would not build up a static charge?

I'm just being cautious here.

Michael