[sdiy] The things one sees..

[Roy J. Tellason]

On Thursday 14 April 2005 11:18 am, Paul D Brooks wrote:
> Although i've seen lots of stuff inside the thousands
> of keybaords i've fixed, two stand out in my mind:
>
> one: a roland hs-80 which needed some keyboard contact
> work (ostensibly).  well, it had been stored in a
> basement which flooded, so it stank of mold pretty
> bad. the fun part:  roaches.  many thousands of dead
> and living cockroaches.  you could hear them moving
> inside.

Ugh.

We did a bunch of work at one time for rental companies (cheap stereos and 
such),  and one time they brought a 25" console tv over that was crawling all 
over the inside when I popped the back off.  It was quickly taken outside and 
put on the sidewalk,  after which the company was called,  told where it was,  
and lectured about what they needed to do with stuff before they brought it 
over.  Even after that,  having stuff coming in with the dead ones in there 
was no fun.

Best one I can remember was from back when I was doing organ service.  The 
person who called me couldn't give me any more specific information than that 
"it was a 1940 Wurlitzer".  Apparently they had this thing in place and 
installed and then built the choir loft around it!  So the pastor and I had 
to lift the bench and then the pedalboard up and out of there before I had 
any room to work at all,  and after I got done opening things up I found out 
it was a reed organ.  (But wait,  there's more!)  So I went looking for the 
electronics,  and found them,  eventually -- in a room behind and to one side 
of the altar,  or to be more precise _above_ that room,  reachable by a 
rather bendy old wooden ladder that was not attached to the wall.  I went up 
there,  with some tools,  my tube checker,  and a long extension cord.  Moved 
the hatch.  And found the tone cabinets,   which needed a bunch of tubes.

Oh yeah,  and the top of the hatch,  as well as the entire floor in there,  
was covered completely with dead bats!  Crunch,  crunch. crunch...