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On Sunday (June 26), we were on our way home from a picnic when we happened to see an old organ sitting along the road
with a FREE sign on it! Well, we turned around to take a look and found a nice old 2 keyboard organ with an internal
Leslie. With the girls, we huffed it into the jeep. It was pretty yucky like it had taken residence in a barn
at some point. We got it home, tilted it out on the driveway and plugged'er in. We hit the switch and started
tapping keys and pedals. Well.... there was no sound. When we went to the back of the organ we noticed this
beautiful glow! There were tubes galore! We were very impressed with all those tubes aglow! Tom and
I reseated some connectors and moved some of the switches and, you know, the thing started to come to life! Now
understand that when we took the rear cover off, which was a lovely caned grill, we found that mice had probably rented
the space at one time. There was sunflower seeds packed in everywhere and of course spider webs and other debris.
So we did a precursory vacuum so we weren't afraid to touch it and did some more reseating of connectors and
flipping toggles. The sound got some better but had some nasty breaking up included. So we hauled it into the
garage so we could work on it another night! I thought it was a pretty silly scene. Two guitar players working
on the Lowry in the driveway...and yes we had our florescent trouble light. We could've been Bo and Luke working on
the General!
Well, tonight we dug into it a bit further. Tom lovingly took out each tube and polished
it clean. There are an abundance of very vintage 12AX7's. They look beautiful and we can't wait to see them lit
up again. The toggle switch and preamp section was a little different. Some of the mice had set up a penthouse
in the top level toggle switch area. They had alot of paper and material stuffed in there and a bunch of plastic beads.
They also unfortunately chewed some wires off the posts. Everything in the organ is hand wired, point to point components.
We vacuumed out the stuffings, beads, and sunflower shells and sprayed some cleaner. We found while the residents had
chewed off the couple or wires, we luckily were able to figure out where the other end went as the mouse had nicely
left a piece still on the post with the insulation still intact. The hard part was figuring out how to move the section
to a place where we can work on it. So that is done and we might do some soldering tomorrow night.
When we dropped the Leslie baffle out last night, I noticed the motor shaft was bound up. I
worked with it a little to free it up. That will be a good project but unless there is a burnt coil, I think it will
spin again! A little WD40 can do miracles! And of course we'll pray over it. Also, last night when
we swung the gate out with the tubes, the other side was packed full of sunflower seeds. I shook that out pretty
good. When we hit the power and played we noticed there were neon bulbs that lit up as you played the keys. That
was very cool! We also found a 1959 penny inside. We think, from the model and serial, the organ dates from
the early 60's.
Well the saga goes on.... We will post more as the two guitar guys try to bring a Lowry back
from the brink!
Tom's site has some pictures from Sunday when we first opened it up.
Additional pictures on Tom's site
Quick update... Wednesday June 29th, last night we worked on more cleaning in the upper control section.
We identified several wires with the insulation chewed off and more importantly, identified where the chewed off wires go.
I put some insulation around a couple of the bare wires. Tonight, there is more of that to do and then maybe solder
the three chewed off wires back onto their posts. We will start cleaning the lower control section and the Leslie baffle
next. We can't wait to see those tubes glow again!
Update, Saturday, July 2 - We made alot of progress getting this back working again. The Leslie works (both
speeds) and most of the keys and switches are operational - although intermittent at times. The major work at the moment
is there is a short that has the Bb note continually playing. Last night, I got it to the point it quit for a short
time. There are some beautiful classic tones with this organ. Finding the short is going to be difficult
though. It seems to come from a stage between the key and the tone generator. There are some repairs
visable around the Bb key's contactors so I suspect that is an original problem not caused by the storage and mice.
It may be hard to find and may end up being the demise of the Lowry. We did get a good bid for the vintage
tubes. If it works though, we would forgo the profit and find a home for the instrument. Well... upward and onward....
The Lowry was able to sing, with the help of Jeanne's dad, happy birthday to Tom yesterday. There are still some
notes missing and the Bb comes and goes. We put it all back together and took a little break for the moment. When
it cools off a bit either Tom or I will start work on the details of what works and what doesn't. The Lowry does have
some beautiful sounds though. Hopefully we can get it working to use on the next recording project! So for now,
it has a place to sleep, abeit in the the garage for the moment. See...guitar players aren't such bad people!
We put up a clip of the Lowry playing away. Check it out! The MP3 is at the top of this page, right after the
pictures.
Well, it got way too hot to work much on the Lowry for the rest of the summer. Even into October, the days were
just too hot in the garage. A little cleaner fluid in hot, humid air goes a long way. We still have the nasty
Bb note to kill and maybe in the next week or so, we will go after that some evening - before it gets too cold to work on
it!
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