"Jon Hammond"]Thanks for the memories guys.
Jon's memories comment http://forum.hauptwerk.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=16287 triggered the following strange recall.
The idea of "memories" brought to mind an "experience" I made many years ago. I was quite involved in a major sound system installation in a Jewish Synagogue in the Chicago area. They had a large 2 manual electronic that I admired (from a distance). Several times I met the tech who cared for the organ. The console was located in a second floor room (stage right) overlooking and open to the auditorium. The speakers were mounted face up in a top compartment of the Ark (on the front platform) where the Torah and other religious items were kept. The sound (for it's time) was quite impressive). The (electron tube oscillators using many 6SN7's) were mounted in many 12" deep racks with the oscillator panels mounted back to back in these 4.5 foot high racks. (The "custom" racks were 3 ft across) There approx 200 such oscillators and these racks were located in the attic basically over where the console (on the 2nd level) was located. So in affect, these racks were at least 4 stories above ground level.
Came the time when a donation was made by a member for a new state of the art Allen to be installed with the above organ being offered (to me) free, just for removing it. I could go on about the removal process which is a story all of it's own. But I won't.
The organ was interesting, esp the story behind it. It seems the design was of a very early Allen organ. Three persons decided to go into the electronic organ building business. As the story goes, these 3 went to a funeral where an Allen organ (this type) was installed. They hid in the church after the funeral, and when everyone was gone, they basically took this organ apart and copied the circuits after which they put it back together and left. No Idea how long that took, but apparently they got all the information they needed.
Then they started to build their own "version" using hand wound coils (inductors) with all the capacitors, resistors and electron tubes etc. As I said above, this organ (that they built for the Synagogue) used over 200 of these tube oscillators, 4 power supplies and 4 power amps each with 4 - 6L6's. Interestingly, that system drew lots of power. When I reinstalled it, I provided for a single 20 amp circuit for the osc racks and when turned on, immediately blew the 20 Amp breaker. Found I needed 2 - 30 amp circuits. When turned on, that oscillator room/area was more than toasty. As you can imagine, this organ was greatly unified. using many elaborate filters. The basic oscillators were mainly either sine wave or saw tooth generators.
Tuning was done by turning adjustable carbon slugs in or out of those hand wound coils and fine tuned by adjusting variable capacitors which moved 2 small metal plates toward or away from each other.
The other item of note (literally) was a note inside the console warning not to look at the blue ray coming from one of the tubes in the console's power supply. As suspected, when checked, sure enough x-rays were being emitted. That was quickly removed and replaced. Something else in the console was evidence that a selenium rectifier had been installed backwards. There was physical evidence, but also still remained that unforgettable smell of a burnt selenium, a kin, in my book, to road kill skunk.
I commend anyone who suffered by reading all of this down to this point. .What a long distance we've come now having Hauptwerk.
BTW, only 10 of those "bootlegged" organs were built, before Allen's patent attorneys shut that "facility" down. I purposely didn't mention the name of that organ. If someone absolutely for sure has to know, PM me.
Rgds,
Ed