Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: Mellotronists

So, I'm cleaning up 1407 and adjusting the keyboard. Last night I was
grinding down pinch rollers and cleaning them to get everything
spinning freely and grabbing tapes properly.

After doing about 12 or so (the ones that were sluggish or sticking) I
decided to put everything back together and see how it was working. I
reassembled and installed the keyboard and found that the tapes were
playing beautifully on the left side of the keyboard - no wobblies,
but when I got to the right half of the keyboard, every other key was
producing no sound.

I found that if I really screwed down the pad arms, that the problem
keys toward the center of the keyboard would produced faint sound, and
if I backed off the pinch roller and readjusted the pad arm, I could
get the sound pretty much in line with the left had side of the
keyboard, but toward the right side of the keyboard, I'd get nothing.

Since this was occurring with every other key, I soon figured out that
it was the back row of playback heads on the head block that
corresponded to the problem keys. It seems for some reason that these
heads are not getting proper contact from the pressure pads.
Everything was fine before I did this, except for the wobblies.

I'm wondering if there's some way that I'm not getting the keyboard
assembly to seat properly. The only other thing I can think of that
might possibly have something to do with this is that I placed a 1/4"
shim between the right hand wooden upright of the main frame and the
little stop or shelf piece attached to the side of the cabinet which
the frame rests on. I did this to help bring the motor into alignment
which eliminated almost all the noise that the drive system was making.

I guess it's possible that this had some effect on keyboard/headblock
alignment, but it seems unlikely to me. Has anyone seen this behavior
before or have any ideas, or does this just speak to my character?

thanks,
john barrick