Once more about the foam

[Juan]

I kind of feel bad about bringing this up again but I can't rest comfortably until I figure it out. I have an A-102. Serial # 21369. I believe this means it is a 1963. There are no rivets that I can see (or holes). There are no missing tones. This organ has spent it's life inside an air conditioned home.
Do I need to raise the manuals to look for foam/felt?

[G4BVK]

I’m in a similar position with my A100, but I’m now pretty sure it has foam. I believe the manufacture date is December 1965, which would make it around a year or so after the introduction the dreaded foam, as far I can determine. Although, when I dismantled pedal switch assembly there was no foam used. I’m not too sure if the means anything.

The only way is to have a look. In saying that, I had the keyboards out on a H100 to remove the foam and it wasn’t that difficult. I separated the two keyboards making more work with all the wires, but I’m sure it made the job much safer. Great care must be taken when lifting the covers off the keyboard. The foam has and nasty habit of stick itself to the wires. So when you pull the covers off its possible to do even more damage. Great patience is need if you are to embark on this job. Having an extra pair of hands at the point of removing the covers is also advisable. I was lucky when I done the H100 the foam only stuck at a few points and no wires were damaged, but I could see that it was starting to attack a few wires in places.

Like me you need to know.

[4hammonds]

i have a 1963 A100 with no rivets in the upper manual and rivets in the lower manual. when i decided to open the upper manual to confirm if it had foam though... it did. the foam was in the form of granules and dust, only two resistance wires became in contact with that stuff. thank God i decided to take a look at it. i cleaned the two affected wires and removed the rest of the foam from the manual. the wires are in good shape

[Twiggybush]

Juan, If your not having problems why go looking for them. Wait until you have to go inside to fix something else. This foam problem borders on hysteria. A couple weeks ago I had an interested party interested in buying an organ from me. She blew me off after she discovered that my organ had foam. I'm wondering where she got such an idea. Hmmm? Confucius say "He who looks for trouble generally finds it"

[jpmas555]

I kind of feel bad about bringing this up again but I can't rest comfortably until I figure it out. I have an A-102. Serial # 21369. I believe this means it is a 1963. There are no rivets that I can see (or holes). There are no missing tones. This organ has spent it's life inside an air conditioned home.
Do I need to raise the manuals to look for foam/felt?

If I don't have missing tones or any foam-related problems, I will leave the manuals alone. If I do have these problems, then I'd go raise the manuals and remove the foam. It will also be the perfect time to do a busbar cleaning.

Similarly, if I needed to clean the busbars, I'd also remove the foam while the manuals are raised.

Joey

[Fanatic]

The most Hammonds having foam inside also have red caps in TG. I believe this is a big advantage. And to remove foam is much easier than TG recaping.

[sfp1954]

The most Hammonds having foam inside also have red caps in TG. I believe this is a big advantage. And to remove foam is much easier than TG recaping.

I would humbly disagree. You can't remove foam without removing the manuals.
You can recap an entire TWG in a couple of hours (once you get the preset panel out of the way).
I've recapped an M3 in less than that time.

[jdoc]

but how long to recap and recalibrate once the new caps make it harsh and brittle, ask some people who have had major disappointment and issues.............

I would humbly disagree. You can't remove foam without removing the manuals.
You can recap an entire TWG in a couple of hours (once you get the preset panel out of the way).
I've recapped an M3 in less than that time.

[Steve Leigh]

Hi All,

Foam WILL destroy a Hammond. It's not a question of "IF" - it's a question of "when".

No absolute knowledge of exactly when foam was implemented .... but everyone knows by now that it sure can wreck resistance wiring. (Rebecca and I made this public ~1995 - we were ridiculed and laughed at.)
It's NOT funny - and it's NOT fun. One disaster that we rebuilt literally needed new (older/no foam) manuals - too many broken wires to even try to trace. The manuals ALONE (ie; nothing but an upper and lower) cost us over $1,800.00 - because we needed them NOW, for a rental company's B3. The situation was so critical, that I actually loaned them one of my own A100s (which I would never do, under any circumstances), so they could fulfill rental agreements.

And then came another crisis: the man who had the manuals had completely chopped off ALL the preset wires - I'll never know why, but you can figure out that this caused us an extra 40 hours of labor to replace all those preset wires.

Please believe me - if there's even a chance that you have foam in your manuals - remember 3 words: FOAM KILLS WIRING. Do the RIGHT thing, no matter how much work is required.

Best to all,
Steve
www.sl-prokeys.com

[Juan]

The most Hammonds having foam inside also have red caps in TG. I believe this is a big advantage. And to remove foam is much easier than TG recaping.

My A-102 has paper/wax caps.

Similarly, if I needed to clean the busbars, I'd also remove the foam while the manuals are raised.

The busbars and presets were serviced and new felts were installed on the manuals all at the same time. While the manuals were up, I asked the tech about checking for foam. He acted like I was some kind of nut for even asking about it. He told me not to worry so much. Looking back, I wish I would have at least figured out if the organ had foam or not because now I'm fretting about it.

[4hammonds]

corroted wire by foam

check out this picture of my a100. one wire was corroted, cleaned and checked continuity to make sure wasn't broken between the key contacts and the manuals terminal lugs

- - - Updated - - -

look at this picture from my A100, one wire was corroted by that foam. i've cleaned and checked for continuity from key contact to manual terminal lug. everything checked ok

[Anurae]

If you have the know how or patience or whatever to do it do it, i still have this job in front of me on my T-500 and i am absolutely not happy
about it, but as soon the foam starts falling apart there is also the chance it sooner or later gets sticky and eats up your wires, if its fine or
just dry breaking apart you can open the manuals without much risk, if it gets to the sticky part then not, then it gets UGLY.

[Tim_at_Jonas]

One of our organs has foam, and it's still perfect. Another with foam went from two dead spots to a dozen in just a few months ;-(

[jdoc]

regional issue, different batches of foam???? Who the hell knows? Never, ever seen it...........any models worse than others? We need a survey or poll other sumtin....

[Brendon Wright]

I think climate might affect the foam differently, or at least at a different pace.
I have a T500 in which the foam had melted into tar but had only damaged a few tones at that stage, and an M101 imported from Canada.

The M100 was mostly felt with only a small strip of foam on each manual. The foam had dried rather than melted, evidently a different climate than New Zealand.

Kon Zissis from time to time checks in on the forum, and living in Australia he's seen a lot of damage done by this.
Kon asked me to post up the following. He did supply photos but an error meant they didn't come through right.
I'll see if he can send them later.
Kon has seen the inside of more Hammonds than my mere handful.

"Hi Brendon.
I noticed on the Organ Forum that there is a thread about foam damage. Some
think that their foam filled manuals are OK because there are no dead notes
or because they live in a location which has a cooler climate. One person
wrote that "this foam problem borders on hysteria" , and another person
wrote " I asked the tech about checking for foam. He acted like I was some
kind of nut for even asking about it. He told me not to worry so much" That
tech's advice was unfortunate.

Steve Leigh wrote a post warning everyone to deal with the foam issue as
soon as possible. I fully agree with Steve's post and I think that anyone
who does not heed Steve's advice (based on his many years of experience) is
in denial of this problem and risking severe damage that will gradually get
worse and worse thus eventually becoming extremely costly to repair and
which may require the foam damaged manuals to be replaced with a set of pre
1964 manuals.

About a month ago I sent you an email mentioning that I have to repair the
foam damaged manuals of a 1965 C3 and that earlier this year I was given a
1969 H-111 organ as payment for this defoaming and repair job.

In 2006 Ray Vanderby and I had delivered this 1965 C3 to the owner's
property and we placed it in the external music room which was a small
octagonal shaped building.
Because of the many windows in the octagonal building, the C3 was regularly
exposed to the burning hot sun and the owner told me that the summer
temperatures inside this octagonal music room would often reach up to around
47 degrees Celsius (116.6 Fahrenheit) so therefore this octagonal music room
was basically a sweltering hot house during the hotter part of the year.

In 2006 when Ray and I delivered the C3 to the owner's octagonal music room,
the C3 cabinet was in excellenmt condition and without any colour fading,
but the seven years of direct sun exposure and heat have caused the finish
on the C3 cabinet to noticeably fade and crack up.

The owner of the 1965 C3 sold it to a new owner last October and the new
owner and I then went to pick up the C3 and after we brought it to the new
owner's home, I then unsoldered and removed the manuals and we then brought
the manuals to my home so that I could work on them.

After I removed the metal covers of both manuals, the foam damage was
clearly visible. The lower manual had moderate damage, but the upper manual
had much more severe damage with the green corrosion widespread throughout
the length of the resistance wire nest.

I have attached a few photos showing the foam induced damage. This should be
enough to help people to realise the seriousness of the foam problem which
is a time bomb in all foam filled post 1964 organs.
If you want you can post these photos to the Organ Forum.

The foam strip in the upper manual had actually come unstuck and fallen off
the metal cover and it was resting directly on the resistance wires. I
believe that the heat in the octagonal music room had caused the self
adhesive backing of the foam strip to dry up and lose it's adhesiveness thus
causing the foam strip to move forward and rest directly on the resistance
wires.

Because the foam was resting directly on the resistance wires, the green
corrosion was very widespread and I quickly realized that to try to repair
this would be a nightmare job requiring many weeks or even over a month of
labour thus rendering this job unfeasible.

The American market value of a H-100 organ is usually between $100 to $400
but the vast amount of time and labour needed for this nightmare repair job
means that the labour fees for such a prolonged job would have run into
thousands of dollars if this was a paying job.

I told the new owner that the foam damage so too severe to be repaired and I
called him to come and inspect the damage himself and I told him that the
only feasible option was for him to buy a set of pre 1964 manuals and that I
would then install and wire up into his C3 organ. The new owner was
reasonable and he accepted the situation and he agreed to buy a pre 1964 set
of manuals.

I emailed a few ebay seller who often part out Hammond organs and then sell
the parts and I asked them if they had any fully functioning foam free pre
1964 manuals for sale and one seller replied that he had a set of manuals
salvaged from a pre 1964 RT3 organ. This included the metal plate with the
drawbars and the preset recorder panel all the switches and the vibrato line
box. The serial number 7006 indicates that the RT3 was built in around 1960.

The owner of the 1965 C3 had to pay around $950 US dollars for the RT3
manuals themselves and around $1400 Australian Dollars to ship the RT3
manuals from the USA to Melbourne.

These RT3 manuals finally arrived in Australia a bit over two weeks ago and
because the Percussion section wires and the Normal / Soft Volume twin core
shielded cable and the Vibrato on/off signal twin core shielded cable were
all cut off where they pass near the pedal drawbars, I had to replace these
with the corresponding wires from the 1965 C3 manuals. To do this I had to
open up the Percussion switch box and the Vibrato on/off switch box of the
C3 manuals so that I could unsolder and remove the corresponding wires from
there and then transfer these on to and then solder them into the Percussion
switch box and the Vibrato on/off switch box of the RT3 manuals.
I also replaced the aged wax paper capacitors of the vibrato line box with
new capacitors, and because the black cloth insulation of several wires
from the RT3 manual wiring harness had been eaten away by mice thus exposing
the bare wires, I had to remove the manual wiring harness from the C3
manuals and then transfer and solder this onto the RT3 manuals.

Because the TG note terminal strips on the underside of the RT3 manuals are
longer than the corresponding terminal strips on the C3 manuals, this meant
that I had to extend the length of the seventy nine wires of the C3 manual
wiring harness so that it could fit on to the RT3 manuals.

I also had to shorten the length of the right side of the black metal rails
of the upper and lower manuals of the RT3 manuals and to remove the Pedal
Solo Unit control switches and then cut down the right side wooden cheek
blocks to be at the C3 size. All this work was needed so that the RT3
manuals would be at the proper C3 size. I sanded and then stained the
exposed raw wood sections of the cut down right hand cheek blocks with a
cedar coloured wood stain to closely match the colour of the rest of the
cheek blocks , and I lacquered the stained section with a number of coats of
Birchwood Casey Tru Oil and after this was properly dry I then wet sanded
and then bufffed the lacquered section to be smooth and glossy like the rest
of the cheek blocks and I then installed these in place so that the modified
RT3 manuals now look like pre 1960 C3 manuals.

I measured the resistance wire ohms values of all 1098 key contacts and all
keycontacts were working properly and produced the proper ohms values. I
added these readigs into the TG & Tapering data spreadsheet

All this work of repairing and setting up the RT3 manuals to fit into the
1965 C3 organ took me nearly two weeks to complete, and the labour charge
for this amount of work would certainly be far more than the market value of
the H-100 organs so therefore I have more than fulfilled my obligations as
per my deal with the previous owner of the C3 to do the repair work on the
manuals in exchange for the 1969 H-111 organ.

After this experience of seeing how severe the foam induced damage on the
resistance wires was in the 1965 C3 manuals, I now no longer want to offer
to repair anyone else's foam damaged manuals because the amount of time
needed to do this job would be way too much and the fees for such prolonged
work could possibly go into thousands of dollars if the damage is as severe
as it was in the 1965 C3 so therefore if someone else asks me to repair
their foam damaged manuals, I will tell them that it would be more feasible
to buy a set of manuals salvaged from a pre 1964 organ and if they agree to
do this then I would be able to install the replacement manuals into their
organ.
I believe that as time goes by , there will be many more organs with a
similar or even greater level of foam induced corrosion than what was the
case with the 1965 C3 that I just worked on.

As the foam induced damage problem in the post 1964 organs becomes more and
more widespread, and the availability of replacement manuals salvaged from
pre 1964 organs becomes rarer and the costs increase, I wonder if
eventually there would be enough demand for someone such as Trek II to
develop and sell replacement circuit boards for the upper manual and the
lower manual which have the resistors of the proper tapering ohms values and
a full set of wires that go between the TG note terminal strip on the
underside of the manuals and the circuit board, and another set of wires
that go between the circuit board and the back ends of the key contacts.
All the best.
Kon.