[sdiy] Spring is in the air!

[Ken Stone]

>We have a healthy sub-culture of garbage picking here and sometimes stuff
disappears as soon as it
>hits the curb.

It's illegal to grab stuff over here - so one has to look carefully before
leaping. My council isn't too bad about it, though some of them will police
the area and fine you if they catch you at it. Obviously their heart is NOT
in recycling as per their cliams. The reckon the stuff belongs to the
contractors and the contractors are loosing money if it is taken. In reality
this applies only to the white goods which they rat for spares which they
then market, or some recyclable metals. The rest of the stuff (often
INCLUDING the recyclable metals) just gets chucked into a truck with an
inbuilt crusher, then taken to landfill. Trust me, I'll salvage something
clasic to save it from this fate.

>> Given that the "wood work" is particle board with platic veneer, have
>> you thought about extracting the keyboard and circuitry and building a
>> new enclosure for them?  Can you find a way to use the keyboard for a
>> DIY synthesizer, while still retaining it's original cheesy
>> functionality and sound (e.g., by switching the keyboard between a DIY
>> synth and the old Lowery circuitry)?
>
>I was thinking along those lines.  I don't think it would be worth much if
I fixed it up and tried
>to sell it.

Correct - these home organs are effectively worthless now. The little
keyboard market killed them. Considering that later organs contain the same
amount of circuitry, and are 90% empty boxes, why waste space in the home. 

>However the manuals would be great for a synth and the bass pedals could be
turned in a
>Moog Taurus kinda thing.  I guess a lot depends on whether all the
functions are on one big mother
>board or on sub boards.  I'll know later this evening.

Older Lowreys (pre 80's) are bound to be full of circuit boards, covered in
nasty little sharp tie points for the wires. Rather crude beasts. Post 80s,
I've never disected a later Lowrey, but there's not a lot in the 80's Yamahas.

Ken

_______________________________________________________________________
Ken Stone   sasami at hotkey.net.au or ken at cgs.synth.net
Modular Synth PCBs for sale <http://www.blaze.net.au/~sasami/synth/>
Australian Miniature Horses & Ponies <http://www.blaze.net.au/~sasami/>