Lowrey Palladium - one pesky pedal!

[lparsons21]

Recently moved my Palladium from my old house to a new one. It had been sitting unplayed for over a year and while almost everything works, some of the pedals were very wonky, sometimes sounding, sometimes not. So I disassembled the foot pedal assy and cleaned up all the contacts with alchohol. Now all but one pedal is working.

It just won't work at all and when depressed the physical sound from the pedal is 'scratchy', note that is with the organ turned off. I figure I need to pull the assy and get a better cleaning solution, but darn it, I'm getting to old to be getting down and then having to get back up. Since it is a pedal I never use, I may just add it to the list of things to do.

For those that haven't worked on some of the Lowrey full consoles, the pedal mechanism is very simple. The hard part isn't cleaning them or adjusting them, it is just getting to the contacts area.

[geoelectro]

I know it’s a pain to get to the contacts. When I clean them, I use a “typewriter eraser” (google it). The burnishing does a better job than alcohol. A lot of techs use these erasers because they can get into tight spaces and you can keep refreshing them by sharpening.

Geo

[lparsons21]

Thanks, I've used them very long ago but had completely forgot about them.

[lparsons21]

Well finding one of those typewriter erasers has been problematic, so I ordered a can of DeOxit, should be here tomorrow or Friday. In the meantime, the one pedal is dead as a mackerel and a few others are twitchy. So I'll clean the heck out of all those contacts when the DeOxit shows up.

Also found the issues that are old on the Palladium:
1. Some console lighting isn't working, needs bulbs. Unfortunately the ones that need changing out also means nearly a complete teardown of the main console to get to the light strip they are mounted on. So that most likely isn't going to happen. IF Lowrey had labeled any damn cable inside this thing I might consider it, but they didn't and the way my back is, if I started digging around labelling and then removing, my back would take me out of action for a good long while. This getting old is just not much fun these days!!
2. The Touch Screen needs a calibration. I know there is a screen for doing that since I've actually seen it, but Lowrey swears there isn't and I can't remember what the hell I did to get the screen the one and only time I did a few years ago.

[geoelectro]

I’m not near my service data but try holding the Features button and hit the reset button. I remember that may bring up some service screens.
I bought my typewriter erasers a few years ago on eBay. DeOxit may work but it works better after the contacts are polished.

Good luck!

George

[lparsons21]

Power on with Features button brings up a service screen of minimal use, but that isn't the one with the calibration of the touchscreen unfortunately. We went through this on the Lowrey forum a few years ago as it is an issue with all the SU and A series touchscreens. Alas, no solution was found.

The most irritating part is that I've actually seen the blasted calibration screen once! But Lowrey insists it doesn't exist and I don't remember what magic keystrokes I used to get to it. :(