[sdiy] Tube amplifier question, keyboards...

[Roy J. Tellason]

On Thursday 12 August 2004 02:50 am, Scott Stites wrote:
> Heh - I just got an Estey Model 801 (circa 1961) AND the bench for $5.00 at
> a garage sale last weekend.  It is in beautiful physical shape.  It,
> however, no longer produces sounds that could be considered musical (even
> for my brand of music).  It contains thirteen tubes, none of which can be
> bought for less than I paid for the organ.

Only 13?  Some of those tube models had quite a few more than that.  The ones 
that really got me were the oddball ones,  like "three-plate tetrode" tubes 
that some of the old Lowrey tube stuff used.  Combining that with "packaged 
circuits" I never did quite understand how those worked,  though watching the 
neon bulbs used for keyers was kind of nifty and did help you find things.

What tubes were used in the unit you got?

> It's got two 37 note full size keyboard manuals, thirteen bass pedals (all
> of which are just solid as a rock), and a volume pedal that uses a
> resistive material/metal plate configuration I've never seen before.  The
> tubes and parts are coming out, and it's going to be the basis of a pretty
> nice controller.

I'm beginning to think a bit here on what I might build with what I have on 
hand.  Starting with keyboards,  for example...

There's this keyboard in a drawer over there,  I *think* it came out of some 
kind of ARP or other,  though heaven only knows that I'd never scrap one of 
those if there was any chance of fixing it.  :-)    Two sets of contacts,  
one with the usual string of 100 ohm resistors and the other apparently used 
to generate a gate?   I suppose it wouldn't be too difficult to use it to 
make CV/gate and maybe even derive a trigger out of it,  or rewire it to some 
extent and make some sort of a matrix out of it?

Then there's a Yamaha YK-10 sitting here in a box.  That came with a CX5 
computer that I don't believe to be functional any longer (and I'm not sure 
that I'm going to bother doing much with that even if I do have much of 
another unit for spare parts).  That one probably is set up as a matrix 
already,  though I don't know if that's a standard connector or not,  and if 
not how difficut it would be to find something to mate with it.  I remember 
that cord as being on the short side.

You guys have any comments on these as a starting point?