Keyboard Mechanical Design

[Ken Stone]

>
>Good point about the vintage machines - most of them are in "fair"
>condition by now, and the contacts in the keyboards are beyond the point of
>ever getting back to their original cleanliness. So their keyboard
>interfaces suck big time (I'm talking about the
>current-source/resistor-string/sample&hold types, which covers most of the
>cool ones). So hacking them into rack boxes is a viable option.

Too true, which is why I wired in the hall effects and left the original key
contacts alone - way to noisy.

The second from memory is scanned by a 6 to 64 line encoder. 

>However, the trick I prefer is building a little digital scanner plus DAC
>type interface on a suitable small piece of vectorboard and tucking it
>inside somewhere, keeping the original keyboard, and thus preserving the
>totality of the machine's original charm. The digital scanner type of
>interface can usually work with even the suckiest contacts, plus there is
>no S/H leakage problems. All around a better solution even if the machine
>still plays okay. Yeah yeah I've said it before, I know, I'm like a broken
>record.... you know, those vinyl things? Geeeez I'm showing my age.

Would you care to elaborate on your digital scanner? It sounds interesting.
I assume it remains a mono proposition, as you are wiring them into mono synths.

Ken.

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                Ken Stone  sasami at blaze.net.au
                   ** Catgirl Paradise **
               <http://www.anime.net/~kens/>
         ** Australian Miniature Horses and ponies **
             <http://www.blaze.net.au/~sasami/>
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