Hi Frank,
Congratulations and welcome to the club! Sounds like if that's all
thats wrong with it you've got a cracking machine there. To cure
the stiffys get yourself some isopropyl alcohol, unscrew the whole
pinch roller assembly from that key and soak the roller and spindle
in it for an hour or so. Keep giving it a spin and it should free up.
Dry it off and add a TINY drop of light machine oil onto the spindle
down the side of the roller. DONT get any on the driving surface.
Give it a spin and wipe off any excess on the sides of the roller.
That should do the trick. When you put it back on you need to
adjust the key pressure. Tighten the nylock nut that holds the key
on at the back until the top of the key JUST touches the underside
of the retainer bar then give it one quarter turn more. It should be
just enough to stop the key bouncing if you tap it with your finger.
Next adjust the pad and roller and you're there (do you know how
to do this?)
As for the key click - is that a "bump" as the tape sets in motion or
something mechanical to do with the key itself?
If it's a bump it's probably muck on the tape and you can clean that
off with IPA too.
Hope that helps.
John
M300#005
To:
mellotronists@yahoogroups.comFrom:
dko4342@...Date sent: Fri, 31 Jan 2003 10:08:44 +0100
Subject: [Mellotronists] It was M-Day yesterday!
Send reply to:
dko4342@... >
> Hi!
>
> Yesterday was M-Day for me. I was out to pick up M400 #160 and bring it home to safe environments. Beautiful! The tape was a standard one with strings, flutes and cello. It sounds exactly the way it should. I quickly checked out some standard things with reverb, echo and running the output
through two Vox amps with spring reverbs. It all sounds fantastic.
> These are the quirks I will have to deal with:
> One key doesn't run steady at all. Must be the pinch roller. I opened it and could feel the pinch roller didn't run freely as it should. What do I do about that?
> There is an pronounced key click on another key.
> I immediately opened the machine and cleaned the tape heads. The previous owner had never done that - and he was a smoker - so I guess I have some more cleaning to do. The white paint has some cracks. Not that it bothers me so much, but a new layer of paint would be nice.
> The machine was last serviced 5 years ago by Streetly. I don't know yet what kind of motor controller it has, but I didn't observe any general problems driving the tapes forward even with many keys pressed down.
>
> And a general question. What is the gospel around here regarding demagnetizers? I have one, but I want to use it correctly if I need to use it at all.
>
> Cheers
>
> (proud to be:)
> Frank Carvalho
> #160
>
>
>
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