Mr Pudding

The Helldesk finally sorted out my remote access today, so I have mostly been a productive work-unit. Nevertheless I did find time to do a little work on the expression shoes. Here is the base plate, with all the drilling done. Note that this is upside down – the bottoms of the shoes themselves are attached from underneath the base plate, and the countersunk holes ensure that it will still sit flush when attached to the console.

And now for something squishy. The front edge of the base plate will be sort-of visible when the expression shoes are attached. The front of the original plate had a strip of veneer to make itself presentable, but this replacement is just ordinary coarse ply. Clearly something must be done. I have thought briefly about this and decided that since I will be painting the top of the base plate with blackboard matt to make it neutral, it will not be a big job to simply paint the exposed edge of the plate as well. Here is the edge, with polyfilla liberally worked into it. I will sand it down on Saturday, prior to giving it a couple of coats of paint, and all will be well.

Tune in soon for part three of this exciting two-part series!

This is part one of a two-part post. As I am presently self isolating, and waiting for the No Help Whatsoever Desk to resolve my problems connecting to the corporate network from home, I thought I would do a little bit of work on the organ. There are a limited number of jobs remaining which I am capable of doing alone, and refitting the expression shoes is one of them.

As you can see, there are currently two of them, which once controlled the swell and choir divisions of the old organ. This is insufficient for my grandiose needs, and I have obtained a third for the solo division.

The shoes are mounted on a board and spaced according to the RCO specification. The job thus far has been to remove the shoes and use the board as a template for a larger replacement:

That done, I have drilled holes for the two shoes, and marked out where the holes need to be drilled for their newly-adopted sibling:

Oops! I flipped the board on the way to the workbench, and ended up drilling them on the wrong side. Not to worry, David sized the board exactly, and when the holes are drilled for the third shoe, they will align as they are supposed to. That is a job for tomorrow, if I still don’t get access to the corporate network.

An unplanned hiatus has come to an end. Mr Norwich Organs was over this evening, and we gradually dismantled the bottom of the console to extract the kneeboard and toe piston mouldings. My plan is to put in a third expression pedal to control the solo, so the kneeboard and moulding to the right foot side will need to be altered. This may, or may not, result in the loss of one or two toe pistons. However, since I have got rather more than I originally wanted (21 as opposed to 12), I won’t be losing sleep over it. We also discussed power requirements, and a Plan has been hatched.

David thinks he might have a matching expression pedal, which would be ideal. Otherwise, he will find me three other matching pedals from his stash. The hole in the kneeboard will be extended, but by how much depends on which route we take. Once the kneeboard is back in place, the expression pedals can be fitted, and the toe piston mouldings can be rebuilt accordingly.

Quite tired now, and enjoying a cup of tea.

Slowly, imperceptibly, the console becomes lighter. The Bradford boards and pre-amp have now been removed (and will shortly be finding a temporary home in David’s shed, pending being used for parts). I have another potential user of the keyboard scanners (under the keyboards) and stop motor controllers (far left and right), and the small Voltages transformer (far left, on the side of the console). I have also got a taker for the keyboards, I hope, so even though the old Wyvern organ is no more, in its demise will life be given to other instruments.

Not much more to do between now and Saturday, other than to detach the keyboards ready for their anticipated collection. Then next week I can resume putting it all back together. Only, ‘it’ is now something else.

I am slightly less busy today than I anticipated, so I decided to have a look at the new pedalboard. It was nice to see that the business end of the pedals on this pedalboard is almost exactly the same as on the other one. I gleefully stripped out the contacts (no photo, I was too excited) and made a start on fitting the reed switches. It took me much less time than before, probably due to this being the second time around.

There is further testing to be done, and minor adjustments to be made, but the bulk of the work of adapting the pedalboard of the new console is now complete.

Now I must go back to work, or I might start dismantling other things and then I will be in trouble tomorrow.