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Have anyone in here been installing the Vintage Vibe 200A Amplifier before? I have a couple of questions.

So I've soldered up everything, but I have a few questions before I hook up power. I've marked up the schematic below to outline what I'm in doubt about:

A) I did not get a new cabling harness, nor did I get the replacement preamp, so I'm reusing the existing wiring harness. In the schematic there is a "shield" marked, which I am assuming is supposed to be the shield from the cable that comes with the 15V and the 150V line? In my instance, the shield cable was cut (see 2nd picture). I remember hearing in one of the VV tutorial videos that when you use the new preamp board you only have one ground line to avoid ground loops. Not sure, but maybe it was cut for this reason? I don't suspect it's a problem that I've left it out - I should always be able to add it in later, right? Just want to check to make sure I may not harm anything.

B) It's not clear what the line marked "G" in the power section is short for. I'm assuming ground? Or green? I only have four lines running out of the PSU. None of them are green, so I assumed it was ground. As you can see in picture 2 I soldered it to a cable that is attached to the rail with a shoe. Additionally I have the ground from the mains input going to the same point. Is this the right configuration? Also there are two red cables.
I'm assuming they do the same thing and the order is not important, right? (Note that this EP is running in 230V configuration)

C) I noticed there is a pre-wired jumper on the Aux input. Could I use this to implement an FX loop if I wanted to? How?

I'm still a bit puzzled as to what comes out of the power supply? I'm assuming there is a 15V and a 150V line, but what cables does what? It's not really covered in the diagram from VV.

Thanks for your help and merry christmas!

I've ordered this replacement switch from ep-service.nl and I'm not completely sure if it's safe to use, given that it only has 2 terminals where as the original one had 4 terminals (see picture).

What I would do to make this work would be to splice neutral wire so it goes directly to the fuses and then only switch the live wire. On the original both the live and neutral are swithed. Initially I thought it would be ok to only switch live, but then I realized how easily you could reverse that simply by reversing the plug in your wall outlet (I'm in Europe and use Schuko plugs that can be reversed) resulting in the neutral being switched and the live being fed straight into the piano. This sounds like a potential death trap - am I right or is there something I'm missing?

Or maybe there is a clever and safe way to install this switch?

How on earth do you get away with measuring lost motion? You can't see anything back there unless you're dealing with the extreme lowest or the extreme highest note?

I've thought about that for a long time. Today I finally figured out a way:

I use one finger to hod the hammer butt back while using the other hand to depress the key and then I look how much motion there is in the whip. I don't have a third hand to actually measure the motion, so it's by eye, but I noticed that a lot of my keys have no lost motion at all even though I attempted to adjust it previously.

What do you do? Do you go by feel or do yo have other little tricks?

So I am in the process of redoing the key bushings on a 200A but I'm not sure what is the best/easiest way to cut the felts.

So far I've been following this video (https://youtu.be/k_dosri4BBg?t=5m6s), but he uses a fancy "Bushmaster" tool that will cut the felts for him. How do I achieve good results without fancy tools like that?

I tried glueing new felt into one key as a trial run and my result is looking like this (see attachments). I was hoping that I could go in after the glue had settled and make a cut in the middle with an exacto knife to separate the two felt sides. I just tried this, but it does not work. The part of the felt that was in the middle is not glue to anything and is causing way too much friction.

I'm surprised how loud the amp in my 200a is. It is an original amp, but it is pretty clear that it has had some work done to it in the past. It's actually pretty good in terms of noise, but I mostly use it running directly into my audio interface and the output level is way beyond line level. At least if the tremolo is on. And that is the weird thing. When I turn up the tremolo the gain is turned up as well. Is that normal? I don't remember seeing this on my 200 while I still had the original amp in and with the Retrolinear amp some overall level is lost when turning up the tremolo (i.e. the gain is probably the same but the impression of loudness is not).

The thing is, as it is now, I can only turn the volume pot up around half-way before it starts clipping my mic preamps. In turn this means a worse signal to noise ratio and when I start using compression that results in some not so pleasant artifacts in the signal. I even have the gain trim on the PCB turned way down to the lowest setting.

So I recently picked up my 2nd Wurlitzer! Never thought it would go this far, but now I am apparently a collector

So this one is a '78 200A and I've been spending the past couple of evenings cleaning and regulating it. I've tightened up the action, regulated lost motion and let-off and overall it's playing really well now, excepts for one thing:

A lot of notes keep sustaining without the pedal being depressed. I lubricated all of the joins on the dampers with Protek and made sure that the springs are tight, but eventually I narrowed the issue down to the dampers coming to a rest before they actually dampen the notes. They are simply either sitting too high or the damper bar is angled too much away from the reeds. I temporarily fixed it by poking the damper felts with needles, making them grow a bit, but it has already settled the day after so I need to figure out how to lower the bar. There are these two L-shapred "hinges" that hold the damper rail on the left and the right side. I have a washer and a tooth lock wash on each side. Is this wrong? Should I remove one of them. I'm sure it was mounted like this before I started regulating and I did not have this problem then.

I just had one reed drop almost a semitone out of tuning. I know this often happens right before a reed breaks. But now I took it out, inspected it and could se no cracks or other signs it may have been compromised. Then tried to force it with my hands and was not able to break it.

I'm about to try retuning it to see if it would work, but I suspect it will break soon anyway. What do you think - is this normal?

Yesterday I got in touch with a guy who was selling his KORG MS-10 along with a bunch of other stuff. I was really only interested in the MS-10, but when he got here he had all the stuff with him, so when I got a good price I ended up buying the MS-10 a KORG Microkontrol XL+ a bunch of cables and a bag full of old pianotuning equipment that some deceased relative had passed on to him.

I have no clue as to what most of the pianotuning equipment is, but I'm really interested in figuring out whether it is something I could use for restoring vintage ep's.

I created a Dropbox gallery and commented on the items that I have already ID'ed. I'd be very pleased if you would help me find out what the remaining items are:

https://www.dropbox.com/sc/q6a3eeffow8jeo9/AADYfQyuEGsJ-X6a_GK40kUxa

So I have a Clavinet D6 and I've tried all kinds of measures to reduce the hum induced when used alongside other electronic equipment:

- I mounted the preamp in an aluminum housing.
- I added extra grounding points.
- I applied (and grounded) copper tape to the housing itself of the pickups.

I do have the aluminum shield under the bottom pickup, but especially the hum induced by having it on top of another keyboard is terrible, so I thought thought about different possible fixes:

- Mount an additional aluminum plate (I already have the stock aluminum shielding plate) under the instrument itself. To net screw up the alignment of the keys I thought about simply mounting it to the outside of the instrument.
- Try to build an aluminum enclosure around the pickups. Du to the nature of the instrument there would be a lot of leaks, though.

So I just tried googling about what kind of metals would be most efficient for insulating and stumbled on something interesting: EMF Paint. Apparently this stuff was designed by the military to contain radio signals within a command central, but is now being sold to consumers and coorporations who may either wish to protect their private networks or insulate their bedrooms against electro magnetic pollution.

I watched a few youtube videos and the effects seem impressive. Did anyone try something like this to shield a Clavinet?

I have a broken reed (#40) and some replacement reeds just came up for sale locally, making it significantly cheaper than ordering overseas from vintage vibe or similar. But he has limited supply and the closest reed he has is #45. Do you think it is realistic to tune it down 5 half steps by adding solder? I compared #45 to my broken #40 and it is about 3-4mm shorter so I'm a little worried that the strike point will be completely wrong if I just add extra solder.

What's your experiences? How far have you tuned your reeds down? I realize that it is easier to tune them up, as you could remove the solder, cut them to the right length and then build up the solder again, but the next reed he has available downwards is number #18, so that would be way too big.

I love to play left hand bass and some times I'm a little frustrated that there are songs I cannot play on my Wurlitzer, because it does not go down deep enough. Ideally it would go down to an F or an E like an electric bass and I would be willing to sacrifice a few keys in the top end.

Then I started thinking about it: If a got a couple of spare keys and some extra low range reeds, wouldn't it be possible to shift the entire range of a Wurlitzer 200 downwards simply by rearranging the keys to start from a lower key and by tuning the reeds down?

Do you know of anyone who have tried this?

So I picked up a D6 quite cheap and I'm starting to look into restoring it. I see the following things that needs to be addressed and I have a whole bunch of questions:

1) Cosmetically it is in bad shape with torn tolex and the right cheekblock has been replaced with an unoriginal piece, which is the wrong type of wood. Further, it seems it spend its life first, in a smoking environment, and later a barn or a garage, so the inside is covered in a sticky residue (probably nicotine) and loads of dirt... Eeeww...

2) The previous owner re-capped the amp. I still find it somewhat noisy, though. Even when I try to keep it away from other equipment. If I fire up my Nord C1, which it is sitting on top of, the noise is unbearable.

3) It seems quite "dull" in the upper 2/3 of the keyboard range.

4) Since the right cheekblock was replaced, there is no mute/damper fader. The assembly to dampen the strings is there, but the fade and the rail that connects the fader to the damper assembly is missing.

Aside from that it works as it is supposed to. The hammer tips have been replaced by the previous owner, so they are in good shape.

The only thing I've done until now was to wash the entire keybed and lubricated the rubber key bushings with some silicone. The keyboard generally had a very bad feel to it with sticky uneven keys and simply getting rid of all the residue between the keys helped a lot and now it doesn't smell so bad either, even though the rest of the keyboard is still really dirty.

My plan was to try to throw the preamp in an alu casing and see how far that would get me in terms of noise, but I'm not sure if I should go directly for replacing the preamp with one of the clavinet.com replacement preamps? How does the sound compare to the original?

I've also considered getting a set of the clavinet.com humbucker pickups, but I'm not sure how much of the noise is coming from the pickups and how much is coming from the preamp. What are your experiences?

Also, clavinet.com supplies humbucker pickups while vintage vibe have apparently chosen to stick with single coils for the vibanet pickups. Will introducing humbuckers not affect the overall sound quite a bit?

Any concerns about replacing the strings? I read a thread about a user who had replaced the strings and found them too bright compared to the vintage ones. Is the difference really that big?

If I choose to replace the strings I would probably go with clavigel instead of yarn. The yarn that's in there now is really disgusting.

How about the mute fade/damper. I know I can get the fader cap from vintage vibe, but how about the rail underneath. Does anyone now where to get one of those?

I have a lot of ungrounded electronics and I'm in the process of going through everything and making sure it is grounded. My Wurlitzer 200 comes without a power receptacle - the cable simply goes straight through the wood, so it is very prone to damage when the piano is laid on its back (the fact that it has not happened yet is a testament to how little the previous owner was taking it out to gigs).

I often experienced very loud "pop" sounds in my other equipment whenever I turn on my Wurlitzer and I really fear what might happen taking everything out to play live under varying power conditions. I suppose it would be an easy modification to install a standard IEC 3 prong power receptacle and wire the ground wire to the harp assembly or somewhere else with good ground. That should make sure ground is the same on all my equipment, but is it safe and a good idea to do so given that it was not originally designed like that?

There is a quite good likelihood that I would often have to play under conditions where there is no common ground, but from what I understand it is still a good idea to try to ground equipment "together" so everything is running off the same wall outlet and everything is connected internaly with ground even though there might not be ground in the wall outlet. Is that true?

[very]

I've been dreaming of getting a real Wurlitzer for years and finally I was able to make it reality!

I'm not sure exactly what the stamp on the 2nd picture means, but I am guessing it means it was produced on the 21st of December 1972 (apparently they use DDMMYY format, which is common in Germany among other places. Did they produce the european versions in Germany?)

Anyhow, while it is generally in very nice condition, there are still some things that I need to deal with.

First, the action needs some service. I have a few sticky keys and in general the hey action does not feel as light and responsive as when I tried playing a recently restored model:

https://youtu.be/dfZoBPbHr1Y

Second, it is very noisy! I was not too worried about that when I bought it, as I was expecting to replace the amp in any case, to restore it to recording-grade condition. But I am starting to realize that the amp might only be a small part of the problem:

https://youtu.be/Rbm0dFA5RmM

Fortunately I discovered that tightening the grounding screws and the hum shield, as well as the volume pot improved the signal-to-noise ratio radically! Hooray!

https://youtu.be/_ld3ok1qFo8

I also tried disconnecting the RCA jack on the amp and discovered that the noise coming from the amplifier is really not that bad after all. There is some clearly audible high-pitched hiss and it is not what I would consider "recording grade", but if I could get rid of the hum, which is apparently from the piano/pickups, I might be ready to compromise on the "recording grade" goal and save a couple of hundred dollars.

How do you suggest I approach the noise issue? I guess I should do the Reed Bar Shield modification? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sdxoT4QYHQ&list=PLtzw4F9-Buzclm8eo9-qRhnQKrUgqc1UJ&index=2) What else might I do to improve the situation?