Modifying Viscount Jubileum 32

[tromba8]

Hi Everybody,

I've had this old Viscount Jubileum for some time now, but need to reduce it's weight and size to be able to easily move it, and have it in a flat in a way that doesn't use much space when not in use.

I'm hoping I'll be able to remove the parts of its electronics which I don't use/aren't needed for midi, thus avoiding having to re-midify everything myself. (The built in sounds never worked properly, and haven't at all now for about a year.)

I've uploaded some photos and what I'm told is the Schematic for this intsrument, which can be found here:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Z_WZsnX5KiV3Kz3oHp7FycMeVJ6S3NZF

If anyone has experience or thoughts (or even a user manual) on how this can be done, any input would be greatly appreciated. I'm about to go and start pulling things out, to see what works.

On one of the photos you'll see there are some areas marked in red, this is what I'd like to remove, particularly the mains power supply, and just have to provide 12v input separately.

Thanks!

[jkinkennon]

I see you have 8x8 matrix manuals. Not sure about the pedals. Do you have a working MIDI output at this time? If not then I would remove a lot of circuitry. I'll follow this thread in case others have suggestions, but my inclination would be to run the keyboards to a new matrix encoder, perhaps something from MidiBoutique just as one suggestion. The pedals appear to be in a matrix of some sort -- will try to get a better look tomorrow...

[tromba8]

Thanks - yes, the onboard MIDI does work, but after some work last night, I would need to keep the majority of the current system for it to work.

I had been looking at MidiBotique's options before. Would just plugging into the hwce2 work? I'd only have to do a bit of rewiring for that to work then.

[jkinkennon]

I had been looking at Midi Boutique's options before. Would just plugging into the hwce2 work?

Unfortunately the manuals are a little different than what the hwce2 would expect to see. It appears that Viscount chains the 8 data read lines through both manuals and perhaps to the pedals and other controls as well. They then use an enabling scheme to pick the active manual plus three bytes of address to pick the active matrix column. That's why there is an IC on each manual that controls the matrix columns.

It is possible to build an encoder modification to work with this console, but I'm not aware of an easy workaround. Does the console send any MIDI when the stops or pistons are used?

[GrahamH]

I modified a pair of (old) Viscount 8x8 matrix keyboards to work with a Roman Sowa MIDI encoder. The same principle could be used with a Midiboutique encoder.
Does this help?
https://www.dropbox.com/s/pds0ccjdnmgy8fo/Viscount%20Keyboard.zip?dl=0

(You need to download the *.zip file and extract the folder which contains two pictures.)

Graham

[jkinkennon]

Good post Graham and a nice job pulling the IC to use just the columns. At that point it's just cross-connecting the right columns and rows to what the encoder expects. I've made a couple of adapter boards that are shared at OSH Park, https://oshpark.com/profiles/jkinkennon. Unfortunately none were a match for this Viscount.

[GrahamH]

Hi "tromba8"

I just looked at your photos and it looks as if your Viscount keyboards and pedal board are the same as those I modified some time ago.
I have therefore added to my Dropbox folder some information relating to the pedal board modification.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pds0ccjdnmgy8 ... d.zip?dl=0

Unfortunately it is a few years since I did this job and I didn't save any more details. The keyboards and pedal board had already been removed from their original console.
However, the simple answer is, Yes, it is relatively easy to adapt the wiring so that they can be connected directly to a Midiboutique HWce encoder.
Basically you need to use a multimeter/continuity tester to determine the "pinouts" of the Viscount keyboards i.e. to identify (a) which pins in the connector are wired to the individual notes (C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G) etc. in each group of 8 notes and (b) which pins are wired to the "commons" for each group of 8 notes.
Then you need to map each Viscount pin to the appropriate pin in the 16-way IDC connector that plugs into the Midiboutique encoder. One way of achieving this is to make an intermediate connector by mounting a 16-way IDC box header on a bit of stripboard.

Good luck

Graham

[Mixtuur4st]

jkinkennon wrote
Does the console send any MIDI when the stops or pistons are used?

No, this console sends only midi key information.

Enjoy,
Jack

[tromba8]

Hi All,

Thanks for the replies - from you've said it appears what I had in mind to do will work, essentially the same as Graham.

Graham - Thanks for that info, was a great help and has confirmed what I was planning to do.

jkinkennon - Thank you for your suggestions and advice, had helped lead me to the above answer.

Next step will be to order what I need, and i'll try and record what/how I do it for the future.

Cheers!

[engrssc]

A breakout such as this can be useful when ringing out and testing such cables

https://www.ebay.com/itm/370899087938?vectorid=229466&lgeo=1&item=370899087938&rmvSB=true

Rgds,
Ed