Greetings from new member and 'new' E182 (E100) owner, tab contact mis-alignment

[tpappano]

Hello All,
A little background- parents bought a new M3 back in '57 which we had lessons on for a while. Some years ago I made a bad judgement call and let the M3 get away when my mothers failing health necessitated liquidating her property. At the time I thought I had no room or time for the M3 (it had been neglected and although cosmetically perfect the TG was frozen) and let it be auctioned off. That bad decision had been eating at me and I finally decided to try to fix it by getting another M3. I missed a chance at one, but *did* get my hands on a 'working' E182 Friday and all things considered, I like it better! I had been reading this forum a bit and soon as I got the thing in my shop I bypassed the click filter and in 2 minutes the thing went from "that sounds pretty good" to "WOW!" Full manuals, foldback, pedals, etc. equals more fun with fewer mods. All tones are working, key and drawbar contacts are all fine. Percussion triggering is not working but shouldn't be hard to fix and I need to do the "B3" percussion mods, too. Only mildly irritating issue is that the lower vibrato tab has a misaligned contact preventing the pedal sound when the vibrato is 'off'. Seems the phenolic contact support is slightly warped preventing one of the contacts from making, or perhaps normal use has worn the plastic cam, and only about .002" off, too. I fashioned a u-shaped clip to slightly squeeze the contact supports together which works, but just thought I would ask if replacement switches are available and if other have had similar issues with tab switches.

Thanks,
Tom in Tulsa

[einstein magoo]

Congrats on the E100!

I'm on a watch for one locally now. I think they are really cool Hammonds and I want One! My L103 is great and I won't get rid of it, but I do have room for a console and the E100 series is within my budget when I see them. Two came up nearby in the last few months but got away from me before I could act.

Sorry, can't help with your question, just wanted to offer my congrats on your acquisition. I'm sure you'll have a wonderful time learning more, and playing and maintaining your new toy (tool).

How about a pic or two?

magoo

[tpappano]

Thanks! I hope you find yours, too! I'll try to post a couple pics this week as I do some more debugging and tweaking.

[Fulsam135]

Congrats on your find! As an E-100 owner, I can tell you they fill the role of a B-3 just fine with a leslie and a little tweaking.

But I can also tell you that the way the tabs are built on these organs doesn't allow for much in the way of servicing them, unfortunately; they're riveted together. For replacements, ebay is your best bet. There's usually a guy or two selling an entire lot of these switches.

Personally, I don't really like them, and kinda wish they'd stayed with rocker tabs. They tried to evoke the feel of a pipe organ stops with them, but Hammonds don't really have "stops" to speak of. Plus the travel doesn't feel too great on the switches that have more than two contacts, and I find them sticking mid-press all the time. For me, they've also caused a lot of problems with the percussion system, causing drawbars to drop out unless you wiggle them a bit, etc.

I've kicked around ideas to keep the plastic tab/mounting hardware, and replace the mechanism with a stack switch built out of stock parts. I just don't have the time these days. Or so I tell myself.

[enor]

The problem with these switches is that the plastic parts warp/bend; both the phenolic boards and the clear plastic "rod" that actuates the switches. I have had success fixing these by slightly bending the metal tongues to compensate for the warpage. Bend them close to their base (at the beginning, not the end) using light pressure from a small screwdriver. It takes some practice to get it right so try to get a few scrap switches to practice on before doing the ones in your E-182. This is a very easy and good fix though, once you've figured out how to do it.

[enor]

Edit and clarification:


What happens to the switches is that the "sum of all warpage" eventually causes the metal tongue to end up too far from the actuator rod, meaning that the contact no longer gets the full "throw" and therefore makes poor or no contact.

Now, in order to compensate for this by bending the tongue, do not bend the tongue the way you first think of, that is "the seemingly easier way" of just bending the tip of the contact tongue. While this brings the actual contact points closer together, it still only gives you the limited throw and thus still poor function of the switch.

Instead do this: in order to get the contact tip to "come out" more, put an inwards dent in the short bit of the tongue that's below the actuator rod. This does two things: It adjusts the angle of the entire tongue so the tip comes closer to its contact; and it also brings the tongue back closer to the actuator rod so you get back the full length of travel of the contact points.

[tpappano]

Excellent advice, guys! There are plenty available on Ebay in case I wreck something 8) Very good advice on where to bend the contact leaves. I will try this today on the vibrato switch. I haven't gotten into the percussion switches yet, some of them may have the same issue. My occupation is the design and manufacture of industrial controls- If these switches give me too much grief, I may just build solid state analog switching circuits to replace all the mechanical contacts, using the existing actuators to control them 8)

[tpappano]

A little update: The percussion works now- I found a medium resistance short on the percussion trigger line. After pulling the trigger wires from their terminal on the re-iterator chassis to trace the short, I could no longer observe it! Put the wires back and it worked fine. Might have been a whisker or some debris that became cleared. Rewired the percussion tabs to provide 2-3-4 harmonic selection, per the instructions at the back of the service manual. Had to wire around a trashed contact on the 'banjo' tab, but the mod works great. The TG, at first, ran smooth and relatively quiet but had some friction. After introducing fresh oil, a few bearings (scanner in particular) had a couple of noisy episodes. I carefully applied a couple drops directly on the scanner wicks where they enter the housing, and after marinating overnight they became quiet. The TG is now almost inaudible when running. Pulled the preamp and metered all the electrolytics, they were all in spec and needed no replacement, nice! The thing sounds great, now if I can only learn to play something, anything... Oh, not sure whether to try inspecting the 'foam', wondering if I should just let a 'sleeping dog lie' 8)