Vox Continental I Problem

[Ray_Manzarek]

Ok theres a lot of Pictures of my organ, i really hop they will talk much than us here :S

Like i said earlier, the top key contact have a black wire, the second a grey wire, the third a green wire then the last have 2 red wire on it. On the Vox illustration its showed that the IV mixture tab is supposed to have 4 wire connected to the key contact. I downloaded many schematic of Vox 300 XX organ but i can't tell if they are related to my specific one.

I also took picture of the buss bar wire, if you need more specific pictures don't hesitate, I'm starting feeling worry about if were gonna be able to fix it up :S

[Ray_Manzarek]

[Ray_Manzarek]

[52 Bill]

The photos show the 4 buss bars for each voice. There are two gold plated wires that make up each of the voice busses.

The wire that the key contacts are normally making contact with when the key is not depressed is a ground line. The wire that the key contacts connect to when the key is depressed is a hot line.

So for each of the 4 busses, there is a ground and there is a hot contact. If the IV hot buss wire is grounded, then there will be no signal coming from the keyboard going to the IV drawbar.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]39222[/ATTACH]

If you look at this photo, you can see a lot of bad wiring. This should be cleaned up and checked to see that the IV buss bar is not shorted to a ground connection. All 4 of the top buss wires should be connected together at this end of the keyboard.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]39226[/ATTACH]

In this photo, you can see the wiring coming from each of the 4 buss hot contact wires. The blue wire is the IV mix, the Grey is the 4' voice, the Green is the 8' voice and the Red is the 16'.

Someone has added jumper wires trying to connect the 4 ground buss wires together. All of this wiring should be removed, as these connections should be made on the other end of the keyboard assembly.

The photos do not clearly show the end of the buss wire where the blue wire connects to it. Make certain that the blue wire is connected to the lower wire of the top two buss wires and that there is no connection to ground at this point.

[Ray_Manzarek]

Thanks for those so helpful information! Ill translate em and continue working with my technician!

Could you draw a basic diagram of how it supposed to be wired? it will help me to show what to do to my technician!!

AndYour help will de rewarded

[52 Bill]

Could you draw a basic diagram of how it supposed to be wired? it will help me to show what to do to my technician!!

See if you can understand this drawing.

Each of the drawbars is connected to one buss bar. I have used the colors of the wires on your organ to represent the different footages. Blue=IV, Grey=4', Green=8' and Red=16'.

When a key is not pressed, each of the 4 key contacts rests on a ground buss bar. When a key is pressed, the 4 key contacts are then moved to touch the footage buss bar, which sends the audio signal to the drawbar for mixing.

[Ray_Manzarek]

Thanks thats is really helpfull, the goal is to bring all that stuff to my technician so i think with images we will be working good, so i modified your diagram a bit to ask a question.





Of course ill ask my tech to redo the ground wiring on the buss bar

[52 Bill]

Each of the 4 drawbars are like 4 volume controls for each of the bussbars. This way the sound can be mixed with whatever tones you like. So do not connect all of the drawbars together. The drawing uses the same colors as the wires on your organ. so the blue buss bar connects to the blue wire that connects to the IV drawbar, the grey bussbar connects to the grey wire that connects to the 4' drawbar, etc.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]39243[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]39244[/ATTACH]

The 4 ground buss bars should be connected together on the right end of the keybed. See the brown wire connecting all 4 in the drawing.

Every key has 4 contacts. There is a separate contact for each of the 4 tones (footages) 16' (low), 8' (medium), 4' (high) and IV which is a mixture of tones. So there is a wire that comes from the tone generator and goes to each key contact for the low octave, the middle octave and the high octave. Additionally there are four wires from the tone generator that connect to the IV contact.

This is true for each and every key in the organ. In the drawing there is only one key contact shown.

[Ray_Manzarek]

Clear!

But whats bugging me is none of the IV contact seem to have 4 wire on it, see on my picture one was took from the far left one and the other from the far right one, One have a black wire on it and the other are a blue wire on it.

I can't believe that someone unwired all those wire, but if yes, well have to rewired them all.

[Ray_Manzarek]

And the lil yellow wire i identified on the picture is it the jumper i have to remove on the IV drawbar?

[52 Bill]

And the lil yellow wire i identified on the picture is it the jumper i have to remove on the IV drawbar?

No, that wire grounds the metal framework of the drawbars, to act as a shield.

I can't really see if all of the additional wires have been removed from key contacts. In order to really see it, the keyboard assembly will need to be lifted from the bottom of the case.

People do strange things for strange reasons. Yes, People Are Strange.

[Ray_Manzarek]

Hhe ok ill take more picture of the key contact assembly!

Once again thanks for your precious help, this organ is the dream of my nerdy life so ill do everything to see it work as it should be!!

But my brain is fried lol

[Ray_Manzarek]

On the picture i posted, where are the jumper cablee i need to remove??

[Ray_Manzarek]

is (except for the jumper thing), that picture was what i need to do?

[52 Bill]

You do not need to add any additional wires from the buss bars to the drawbars. Just make sure that the wire from the blue buss bar connects to the IV drawbar, the grey wire connects to the 4' drawbar, the green wire connects to the 8' drawbar and the red wire connects to the 16' drawbar.

And make sure that all of the wiring at both ends of the buss bars has been correctly connected. When there are lots of added wires and bad soldering (welding), there is a chance for things to be mis-connected.