A "catty" Protege AP-4

[John Vanderlee]

Received that Protege AP-4 last week. This post could probably go anywhere but I 'll start here.
The previous owner had cats, so the console stinks like cats. I have considered washing it all down with Murphy's Oil Soap, and removing most of the guts to wash the inside with Spic&Span or such cleaner. Then dousing the grille fabric with FeBreeze. Anything I have over looked? Even though it stinks, it SOUNDS nice!
Any suggestions?
John

[jbird604]

No doubt that is a real stinker, but it may not take as much work as you think to get it de-scented. I've found generous applications of plain old "Pledge" furniture polish, with its pleasant smell, is about all I need to remove a stinky coating from an organ. Of course the ones I have to de-scent are usually scented with cigarette smoke instead of cat funk, but I do find that a good dousing with Pledge, rubbing and wiping it all away with copious paper towels, will go a long way toward removing all the external residue.

That said, I do recall one console that I had to scrub down with something stronger -- I think it was Lysol in water -- before I could break through the grimy film with Pledge. So if you have a visible coating or just a sticky feel on the surface, you may do well to dissolve that gunk with something before you use furniture polish.

We clean keyboards and stops and other plastic surfaces with those handy disinfectant wipes that come in pop-up canisters. The wipes are very mildly detergent in their action, and have a sweet scent, and leave behind little or no residue. To make sure there's no greasy or sticky residue, I follow the wiping (which may take a big handful of wipes to do a really dirty keyboard or stop rail) with a micro-fiber cleaning rag that is VERY sightly wetted, just enough to make sure the residue gets wiped away, but never any water that is going to drip out of the rag and get into the keyboard or anywhere else. Q-tips will come in handy for cleaning the edges or keys and tabs, reaching into spots that your fingers can't reach.

Inside the organ, you should be able to wipe down everything in sight with more of the disinfectant wipes and follow with damp paper towels and/or the microfiber rags. When wiping metal assemblies with electronics inside, such as the power supplies and the W-5 cage and other big parts, be extremely diligent not to let any water drop into the assemblies. This won't happen as long as you are using only the wipes, which are nearly dry anyway, and a micro-fiber rag that is wrung out until it too is nearly dry.

If the cats have peed inside it and the pee has run underneath any of the assemblies in the floor, you may wind up having to unmount them so you can clean underneath. I'd also lift up the keyboards one at a time. Raising the swell you may find a lot of trash on top of the great keys, which can be vacuumed away, then the keys carefully wiped with the nearly-dry rag (possibly starting with a gentle application of the disinfectant wipes, if the keys look nasty). Then raising up the great keyboard you may find a lot of dust under there, and possibly some pee, if the cats were rude enough to use the keybed shelf as a toilet too!

This might take a few hours, spacing the work out so you don't get really grossed out and sick of it! But I think you'll be able to get out the biggest part of the smell right away, then the rest of it may take a week or two to fully dissipate. It might hasten things to set some fans around the console blowing into and through it once you have done all the manual cleaning you can. You could also burn some scented candles in the room. Some people swear by baking soda, which might help if you carefully sprinkle it on all the flat surfaces inside (but NOT getting it inside anything). It might also be useful to put some baking soda into the water you are using to wet and rinse out your micro-fiber rags.

Lot of work for a little organ, but these can sound pretty decent. After all, the technology inside is W-5 and at least has the potential to sound as good as the bigger Allens of the same era.

[John Vanderlee]

I appreciate all the good advice John! However rather than dealing with Qtips, rags, cleaners etc. for the keyboard, I have found it more effective to just commit a few hours to removing all the plastic keycaps and washing them in a bath. Putting them back on goes surprisingly quickly And the keyboard looks like new!

[you795a]

Once you get rid of the smell you will have a nice organ . When you are in there could you post the serial number of the organ here. It would start out as AK-XXXXX. I may have worked on it. Thanks.

[John Vanderlee]

Will do!
John

[Coenraads]

When I had a pipe organ in my house, in the 1970s, our Persian cat would sleep on a little mat on the reservoir. As soon as I started up the organ, she would rush upstairs and disappear into the console through the swell pedal opening, not to reappear until I turned the organ off. But she was very fastidious and never left anything behind. Such was not the case for the four manual console we acquired and installed in the Conservatory of Music in Victoria. There was clear olfactory evidence that a cat had been inside the console. We were puzzled to find that some of the SAM plugs were corroded and eventually concluded that the cat had managed to get up behind the stop jamb and decided to mark its territory their. Cat pee is very corrosive, and I recommend checking all connectors for unusual signs of corrosion. On the plus side, the cat odor will certainly keep the rats away.
John

[Steve Y]

We have cats and have in the past had to deal with some of them "thinking outside the box". The best way to remove cat urine oder is with an enzyme based urine odor removing solution. There are two brands that work well: Rocco & Roxie Professional Strength Stain & Odor Eliminator - Enzyme-Powered Pet Odor & Stain Remover for Dog and Cats Urine and the second being "Nature's Miracle Cat Urine Destroyer". These odor eliminators are available at pet stores as well as online through Amazon and Chewy. Good luck with your new instrument!