Rodgers 530 Farad keyboard questions

[Frances Knudson]

We are hoping someone here has experience with the Farad keyboards used in our Rodgers 530. We started to get a clicking noise from one key on our keyboard which we have isolated to the rubbery dome beneath the key (see attached photo). After removing the relevant key (an E) and the F next to the E, it appears that the membrane spans at least several keys.

Question 1: does this membrane extend the entire 61 keys or is it more limited?
Question 2: who carries these as replacement parts?

Thanks-
Frances and Jim Knudson

[jbird604]

That dome (toward the front end of the key) is the "tracker touch" gadget. The two-section rubber thing more toward the rear of the key is the pair of key contacts. The key contacts are of course 100% essential. If they rupture the note either won't play or will cipher or have some other issue.

However, the tracker touch thing serves simply to give the keys a sort of simulated top-resistance feel, reminiscent of a tracker organ action. It has nothing to do with the operation of the notes themselves. So it is expendable, if need be.

It is normal for the tracker touch bubbles to have a little pop or click when they go down. If this one has started to make excessive noise, look it over carefully to see if it is broken or if something has fallen down around it. You might be able to make it work properly, if it just needs cleaning out, or if there is a crack that you could seal up with something like silicone.

When these organs were being sold, Rodgers told us that if the customer didn't want the "tracker touch" feel, the domes could be removed. I assume it comes off in sections, but nobody ever asked me to remove them, so I can't say for sure. If you find that you have to remove it, you can probably swap it into the top octave where it will make little difference to you. But how that is done, I can't say.

[toodles]

FYI, it is Fatar, not Farad. A Farad is a very large unit of capacitance, equal to 1,000,000 (one million) microfarads.

[Frances Knudson]

Thanks to everyone for the help. We made some improvement today - the touch bubble appears intact under magnification, and there wasn't any foreign material in the way. We did not pull any more keys than the 2 we originally pulled so we can't say whether these things are installed in sections or is one continuous piece under all 61 keys. The substrate of the bubbles appeared to have lifted away from the key bed, so I tried to glue it back down, without apparent success. We did ensure that this was not caught under the keys upon reassembly. At this point the excessive clicking has not returned, but time will tell.

This experience has been very educational, as organ technicians are scarce here even in normal times.

Jim and Frances Knudson

[jbird604]

Good work. Maybe you fixed it without knowing. Click may not return if some of the glue got into the void and filled it.