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Time to Get Electrical

That was a very interesting read ! Thank you
Thank you!

That image exists as a part of a filing system we used where we not only took pix of the product, but also the setups we used.
There were many fixtures what were a part of a numbered system that were acceptable for holding various JIC fittings for when we needed held to customize them or even machine ones completely out of raw stock.
My Father, one brother and I all share eidetic memories, so recollection by imagery is already our thing.
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I don't want to appear as hijacking your thread, but here is a brief outline on some of what goes on in or around my hobby machineshop:
 
68 at ping young.jpg

Green highlights the door frame
Blue denotes the lock cylinder that came out of the door
(the shop truck was in a perpetual state of customization)
Orange points to the piano hinge on the aluminum door.
The truck went further on to include a handmade custom grille, a filled tailgate, altered lighting systems, a 3" chop and lowering.
Note that there are no visible lugnuts on the Jeep Wagoneer aluminum wheels
I lost pretty much every image of my past when a box of several thousand analog emulsion film images I set on a shop floor to head home with me the next day and their negatives were lost during a 100 year flood.
What little images I have of those days were are all scans of instamatic and Polaroids that have been handed to me by others.
There are no existing images of my '68 Formula 400 Pontiac Firebird, the '67 Chevy Camaro RS ragtop or my '68 Formula S Plymouth Barracuda.
My brother has one image of my '72 Pontiac Get Tools Out 455 ragtop sitting behind one of his earlier rides but he has yet to scan it for me.


 
I have always been terrible at building stuff, but I bought some studio lighting and put it together on my own yesterday :)
I still usually need to hire people to do furniture though...
 
I've just been going through some of my retro computers and just found my trusty old CPC 464 flashes it's LED and trips out it's 5v supply. I hadn't planned on doing any repairs and my "work bench" isn't super organized like yours but it looks like it's time to roll up my sleeves and get to work.

I hadn't looked at the inside of the machine since I was maybe 18 (much longer ago than I want to admit). But there was some damn weird soldering I had done on an unpopulated IC footprint. It was so hamfisted it must have been at least two decades ago. I don't think that's the problem though. I suspect the cassette unit has gone bad. Besides, I cleaned up the offensive soldering and it's still not working.

This might actually be one situation where a capacitor is actually to blame! But I wont know until I power up the main board with the cassette unit out of circuit.

I've made my thoughts about indiscriminate "re-capping" known on the muttering thread lol! :smilecat:
 
May favorite thing to work on , it is a 1968 Wurlitzer 200a . Also my favorite instrument to play In bands .It requires maintenance and repairs from time to time. Because it is so old .

It is all mechanical portable piano . All real wood and capacitors and transistors. No digital components. View attachment 91273
I have a 1990s synthesizer/keyboard. It is my wonderful joy. I would never take it apart to work on it!

But I'm jealous of your 1960s beauty. It's giving me "The Doors" vibes.
 
I have a 1990s synthesizer/keyboard. It is my wonderful joy. I would never take it apart to work on it!

But I'm jealous of your 1960s beauty. It's giving me "The Doors" vibes.
Nice do you remember the name of your synth ?
Oh yeah The Doors , Ray Manzarek used a very similar electric piano Called a Fender Rhodes on “ Riders on the Storm “

You have a really good eye to catch that! . The Wurlitzer and Rhodes were in direct competition for sales in the 1960s

I actually play Riders on the Storm on mine all the time to warm up ! I really like the doors too . Especially the song “ The Crystal Ship “ and “ Waiting For the Sun”

Here is the one Ray liked to Use
CEADCB56-1B7A-4780-A401-FE8700C13A12.jpeg
 
Nice do you remember the name of your synth ?
Oh yeah The Doors , Ray Manzarek used a very similar electric piano Called a Fender Rhodes on “ Riders on the Storm “

You have a really good eye to catch that! . The Wurlitzer and Rhodes were in direct competition for sales in the 1960s

I actually play Riders on the Storm on mine all the time to warm up ! I really like the doors too . Especially the song “ The Crystal Ship “ and “ Waiting For the Sun”

Here is the one Ray liked to UseView attachment 91465
A Casio something or other. It's in a box until my art and music room (aka the repurposed den/dining room) is all set up.
 
Sounds fun ! Oh yeah old capacitors prone to failure and leaking . I will check out you thread on Re- capping
Found the little blighter! First one I suspected too! Computer now beep boop beep beep boop! :) By the way, that's glue, not capacitor juice in case anyone is wondering! :smilecat:

IMG_20221214_011230_057.jpg

IMG_20221214_011238_957.jpg
 
Bodacious! Good job . Fairly cheap fix except for your time .
Thanks! :) It was fairly uneventful, not quite the adventure I was expecting. Once I saw the position of the capacitor on the board, it was an educated guess and a quick check with the multimeter.

I would need to double check, but I'm fairly sure that it was there to soak up spikes/back feeding from the cassette motor. So it could have been getting zapped a lot over the years.

I replaced it with a salvaged capacitor from another board. It's been checked before I stored it so I know it's good and probably will be for another 37 years! :smileycat:
 
Thanks! :) It was fairly uneventful, not quite the adventure I was expecting. Once I saw the position of the capacitor on the board, it was an educated guess and a quick check with the multimeter.

I would need to double check, but I'm fairly sure that it was there to soak up spikes/back feeding from the cassette motor. So it could have been getting zapped a lot over the years.
Good assessment.
I replaced it with a salvaged capacitor from another board. It's been checked before I stored it so I know it's good and probably will be for another 37 years! :smileycat:
That’s Even better !
 
Mainly an electronics guy rather than electrical per se, though I was briefly a construction electrician. Repaired my first tube radio when I was 6 years old. Mostly luck then, but it got my interest jump started. Been a Ham Radio operator since I was 17. I am 65 now. Still doing DIY radio projects, as well as arduino and raspberry pi projects. I enjoy designing, breadboarding, and testing new circuits for some specific application, then putting them into real world use.
 
Anyone got any cool ideas for kalimba amplification? I'm torn between getting actual pickups and wiring it to an input jack or just shoving a contact mic in the hole and calling it a day :D

It's one of those medium-sized, generic wooden ones. Seems like there's probably enough room in there to do whatever
 
Easiest way would be with a condenser mic. Good frequency response, small size.
 
Anyone got any cool ideas for kalimba amplification? I'm torn between getting actual pickups and wiring it to an input jack or just shoving a contact mic in the hole and calling it a day :D

It's one of those medium-sized, generic wooden ones. Seems like there's probably enough room in there to do whatever
What if you made a pickup out of a piezoelectric disc and a cable? Those are cheap as chips and if they can amplify acoustic guitars or (like one thing I saw on Hackaday) serve as electric pickups in a wax cylinder player, I bet a kalimba is fine.
 
I guess you could use a couple of guitar pickups. The keys are metal so they would work at least in theory. Assuming you can fit them in an appropriate place, you could then easily use guitar FX with it. Piezoelectric pickups should work too but they tend to be quite low in their output in my experience so you have to crank the amp a bit. I've seen people cut the piezoelectric discs into strips to place under guitar strings so you could install a piezoelectric transducer under each key. A condenser mic will work well but will also pickup ambient noise too so if you want a nice clean sound that could be challenging if you go that route.
 
These are all great ideas, thank you!

Yeah, I have a bunch of condensers around that I use on the regular but I'm wanting to either use pickups or contacts so I can really juice those FX as hard as possible (and use distortion, of course!). Apparently people use even external ones, which I guess might work well-enough if it's sitting still on a table
 

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