Hammond l102 Lower manual issues

[toto]

Hi there, Hope you are all good !

It’s been a while since I’ve been here and I need some help please!

I’ve been called to take a look at an old Hammond L102 that has few faults. I fixed the obvious problems but I’m stuck with the following one:
The lower manual sounds very bad, all the keys work but when I press them I can hear that the nine contacts for each key don’t fully make sound. The tones go on and off. So I did press keys very fast for a long time and I did the busbar shifting but the problem is still there.

Before I Tackle the painful manual dismantling process, is there something I should do to avoid this?

Could the black foam be the source of the problem? If it is would a foam removal cleaning solve the problem?

Many thanks!

[enor]

Hi there, Hope you are all good !

It’s been a while since I’ve been here and I need some help please!

I’ve been called to take a look at an old Hammond L102 that has few faults. I fixed the obvious problems but I’m stuck with the following one:
The lower manual sounds very bad, all the keys work but when I press them I can hear that the nine contacts for each key don’t fully make sound. The tones go on and off. So I did press keys very fast for a long time and I did the busbar shifting but the problem is still there.

Before I Tackle the painful manual dismantling process, is there something I should do to avoid this?

Could the black foam be the source of the problem? If it is would a foam removal cleaning solve the problem?

Many thanks!

The most common cause of this kind of problem on the L-100 series, by far, is poor connection in the white Molex connector that connects the manuals to the rest of the organ. Take apart, clean, re-seat.

[toto]

Hi Enor,
Thanks for the reply.
I'm gonna try this and hopefully this will work.
Looking at the diagram it says "lower manual busbar wire" and it goes to the lower manual to the lower manual preset switch assembly so it looks like it's my problem
Fingers crossed!

Thank you

[toto]

Hi Enor, after cleaning the white molex the problem is still there.
Any idea?

Thank you!

[enor]

Hi Enor, after cleaning the white molex the problem is still there.
Any idea?

Thank you!

Yes, next place I'd check and clean is the lower manual preset tabs.

[toto]

Thanks Enor,
I'll do that and hope it fixes it!

[toto]

Hi Enor, I did take a look at that Hammond again and I checked preset keys as you suggested but no luck.
So I did remove all lower manual keys, cleaned, then opened the manuals, did an air blast, did spray contact cleaner, removed the 7 busbars, cleaned them and rebuild it all. the problem is still there.
I am sure the problem is inside the manuals because if I press down certain keys, I hear that some key contacts don't make contact with busbars so I don't get the full sound. when I press a key down and I shake my finger left to right, the full sound would come.
Could the paladium contact keys be the fault? Should the busbars be replaced? Any tricks to do a deeper clean for these contact keys?
I'm loosing hope!

Thanks a million!

[enor]

Did you inspect the busbars to check for broken palladium wire as you cleaned them?

What did you use to clean them with?

Your problem, as you describe it now, sounds like a typical case of dirty busbars.

[toto]

Hi Enor,
I did clean the busbars with a clean cloth and contact cleaner, they looked dirty (see picture) and they are better now but still not great. After the cleaning, the busbars still had brown stains on it. Shoud I reclean? With what?
Do you think the black foam could also be my problem? I didn't check that yet.

[enor]

No, the foam isn't your problem. Although the L-100s have foam in them, they have a much narrower foam strip than the consoles and it's differently positioned so as to not cause issues.

And even if the foam could make contact with your wiring, this is not how that problem would manifest itself. The frequencies would be gone totally and no amount of wiggling the keys would bring the tones back.

[toto]

Thanks Enor,
That is great news.
I suppose I'll remove the busbars and clean them again. What should I use to make them shiny and back in proper working order?
I Have Brasso polish in the garage, it's good to bring back copper and brass to original. Would it be advised to use that and then contact cleaning lubricant?
Than you so much

[geoelectro]

I polish them with Brasso and then with DeOxite. You want to make certain no residue from the Brasso is left. A slight coating of DeOxite contact cleaner will help the contacts and hold off the tarnishing process.

Geo

[toto]

Thank you Geo,

Ill do this then and I hope this will work.

[toto]

Thank you Enor And Geo, problem fixed.
Brasso cleaning really did the job properly. However, when I rebuilt the manuals and tested them I still had bad contacts.
I found out that the key contacts were not fully down when pressed by the keys. So I bent down the "little tongue" on each key that makes contact with the key contact and now it all works perfectly, no dead tones anymore. This is strange that I had to do this, maybe it's because of the age and the key contacts shrank or moved down a little bit over the years...

Thank you again!