philicorda

And this is a Philicorda organ. You can get them pretty cheap on ebay these days. They have a fuckin cool spring reverb. It is mono, and it says spiong, but spiongs can be ok too, especially if you are into spaghetti westernish dessert guitars. See, on each side of the keyboard there, I drilled holes for extra jack-input and utputs - to be able to play directly into the spring-reverb- blocking the organ.

AMS RMX16

My adventures in the exiting world of audio-electronics continues with an upbrush in my AMS rmx16 - the all time favorite reverb, ever!... Its an evergoing project to keep this thing alive, and every year another component goes down. The chips are a nightmare to swap. And sone of them are almost impossible to find. Thanks to David Kulka for all the good tips

I've searched and looked for the schematics for the AMS rmx16 for two years now. It seems like it was never released. So I just had to jump in, and see what could be done with my limited knowledge. After cleaning the unit for old stuff and sticky glue (thanks to degreaser)
After cleaning, I changed almost all the capacitors. probably around 100! I even took out some of the pF caps. Ugh... Found some nasty tantalums in there plus some really rusty ribbons. Then I cleaned the buttons and swapped some of them, +swapped the battery, and rebuild the PSU plus the components placed below the battery.

look! new tantalums!

- Got the new fan, buttons and ribbons from www.studioelectronics.biz. .... Wonder how long it will last before it goes down.... again

TAPCO 4400 Stereo Spring Reverb

Todays project was to remove some of the noise from my Tapco 4400. It's a stereo-spring-reverb with character and eq. Here's what I ended up doing :

Handled the grounding first and wired grounding wires to one star spot close to the power-entrance to remove hum. There was several potential ground-loops, so I also removed the screws that made contact between pcb-ground and chassis.

Next, I put in +/- 18V-regulators and bigger caps in the powersupply, plus a 100nF filtercaps to ground. didn't hear any difference, but a cleaner DC power doesn't hurt.

The VU meter looks cool, but unfortunately it brought distortion back to the audio (on one side), so I decided to disconnect it. Maybe there's a short somewhere to the audiochain.

Last, but not least, the caps were changed and the 5K sliders was changed to 10K sliders. The unit dates back to 1976, and the connectors needed a good cleaning. The Tapco4400 is a brutal kind of spring reverb. And with a strong boosted input - it goes SPIOOOONG. With the 4band EQ you can shape it's sound, and since the actual springs are so big, it is mainly used here for extreme reverbs and 'creative'-effects. - I dig it on perc stuff, woodblocks etc. and dessert-guitars

Waves Of Infinite Harmony

At the moment, I’m really into springreverbs. I collect them, and I’ve bought both organs and amps, just to get a hold on those springs. I’ve got them in all sizes, and I’m dreaming of building a big spring-reverb chamber, where I can route the signal into the springs that will make the best fit with the mix.

If you like the sound of a trembling springreverb, you should check out the reverbs in the old houseorgans. The ones that hangs in a wire are the coolest. On my Philicorda organ, I have installed extra inputs and outputs, so that I can use the springreverb separately. I’ve used it on everything from vocals to drums.
Here's a picture of the inside of my RA-500. Notice the speaker glued on the metalbox in the middle. I did the filmmusic to a 70'ties inspired spagetthiwestern film once, and I ended up placing sending deep sounds through the metal into the stereo springs. It was so cool, that I installed it permanently with a jack-input for the speaker on the front.

Here's a picture of the front of the unit. Four additional jack inputs, going to strange circuits making the springs go bananas.

oh and, The old trick with running the sound through a piano while holding some keys down still works - if you are up for it. That way, you can play and extent the harmonies in the reverb.