The
Wurly of My Dreams
(12/18) That would be my
Wurlitzer
200A
electronic piano, in a dream state more than a few years, and which I
totally
failed to wake-up. (But you can skip this tawdry introductory tripe,
gentle reader,
and
go directly to the tawdry
towering denouement.)
... My beloved Yamaha
DGX500
has a perfectly adequate supply of “electric piano” sounds,
infinitely superior to the poor broken wurly. But I am driven by guilt
/
despair / relentless duty
to repair
the 200A (1.) because
I thought I broke
it (didn’t really)
and (2.)
because it is a family
heirloom, passed down in sacred
trust
and/or blind neglect by my departed parental
units. ... My mother apparently would tinkle away on it,
until the
arthritis got too bad. And I can’t
throw
it
away, what with the exorbitant web prices
— at 1/20/21 there were two at ~$3K;
looked like one of them’d been bid up!
... Sadly, I don’t even
particularly
like
piano sounds,
electronic or acoustic. ... Glenn
Gould has started to annoy me, on my
endless renaissance-baroque-theater-organ muzak, because I don’t
think
Bach clavier music really plays that well on the piano — the
harpsichord renditions usually sound better to me. And I am totally
scornful of the wildly proliferant magic ears snoots who claim all
kinds of super audio privilege for various arcane bits o’ junk,
astonishingly always correlating with high price$
— it’s amazing
how authenticity drives up the fare!
But
I am
fond of schmalz,
with the beautiful organs,
and
in lounge piano music, which I will occasionally attempt on the
aforementioned DGX500, to great personal satisfaction, playing bits of
antique sheet music or the marvelously EZ-play Reader’s
Digest Parade of Popular Hits. ... My devotion to which
has obviously
fallen-off, since I couldn’t find it right away just now. ... But
nevertheless I must
repair my Wurly — “to destruction” if that be its fate.
... It’s been too
long in the music room, sullen & silent.
The
trouble is, it’s complicated!
... I actually bought a $10 video from the admirable
www.vintagevibe.com,
a center for all things wurlistic, but theirs is a sophisticated
much-more
modular
200A, with handy detachable
plugs. Mine’s
got wires
stuck all over the place
which I have to do something about,
before I can lift up the central metal platform to get at at least one
broken key — which, mysteriously, isn’t
my fault (sadly untrue).
The video was
useful,
in that it told me I would have
to get that metal thing up, of which I might not’ve been certain
otherwise
— which was easily worth the $10.
But
even after I fix the key, if ever, I have to replace the output
transistors, or at least so I guesstimate,
since
I
seemed to break the thing by
plugging in an 8-ohm speaker, after which it will
only make sad barking noises with traces of harmonic tonality. Perhaps
if I ever get so far, I’ll tack in a 100Ω resistor or something,
to
save it from future idiots.... (These conjectures were totally wrong.)
Why
not get it
repaired? At one of the
music stores that infest the internet? Which will
never screw-up, and always charge vast $ums?
Where shipping will cost more than my DGX?
... Because
I don’t feel
like it; I’m
a pitiful DIYer,
and I will fail in my own good time, which is
quite leisurely, and perhaps
even know the reason why.
... And really, so far
I’ve enjoyed the
ride — kind-of.
... I’ve bought clouds of insulated connectors, crimping tools, and
cable
labels for a
few
bucks, so I will cut cables with wild impunity. The labels were useful,
but the connectors turned-out to be
totally unnecessary when I finally figured-out what to unscrew,
including a
ridiculous volume potentiometer stuck on the totally-inaccessible bottom
of the thing. ... I mean, inaccessible during performance, which is
what I assume the stupid thing was supposed to do in that annoying
position. I imagine the piano player crawling under with a screwdriver,
the strobe lights a-flashin’. ... But I
do
still fear
the
output transistors:
with the
unlikeness of my 200A to the video’s, I can’t help but wonder
if I’ve
got the wrong output transistors (from vintagevibe).
And now
that I got the metal
thing out, I can fear the broken
key first,
which still seems utterly
inaccessible. And see that spring, on the right of the detailed diagram
over there ?
Not only doesn’t it exist on my
wurly, it doesn’t even exist in the beautiful vintagevibe
video! And
apparently, to repair
my single key,
I’ll have
to take the entire piano apart. ... My chord
organ is a lot
easier — I guess by that still-ancient day, Hammond had figured-out
what
a whole bunch of
grief is induced by unrepairable design. ... The wurly is just
repulsive;
they didn’t want
you to
repair
it, they wanted you to buy another. And it came after
the chord
organ!
The
Fault
in Our Stars
So
I got the tines assemblies off and still
couldn’t take the key out, but I did
at last get to see
the fault — which of course was
entirely mine
— I used a too-long
screw
to put one of the wurly legs
back-on
in the dénouement
of the Great
Move,
and it obstructed the key. I am totally
guilty. ... And I should’ve figured-out how to see it earlier, with some
kind of mirror or
gadget.
... And I am doomed to put it back together and
verify it still barks,
just in case I’ve managed to wreck other innocent victims
along the way. And then
confront
the wily transistor.
At least
I know how to get the
stupid metal thing out. ... So I will continue
to joyfully curse the darkness and puzzle over cryptic diagrams. ... Speaking
of which, when I
peeked at
a schematic I discovered there’s 150
volts in there, looks like fed to
the pickup at a very low current — oh my gosh, these
people
(search for “struck reeds”) explain it’s a capacitive
pickup, of
course! Like a condenser
microphone; the tines are all one plate, and
some kind of intricate metal structure around them is the other....
It
Barks!
So
after 17 months of pointless labor (subjective time), I plugged it in
to let the smoke out, but instead — it barked!
As of yore! Now
I will try and
replace those wily transistors, maybe....
Nevermore?
But then it turned-out those peculiar components I’d
been studiously
ignoring
weren’t
power supply coils
as I’d ignorantly imagined — they’re fuses!
And the
left one
is
open! ... Googling “wurlitzer
200a fuse” not only found a place
to buy a
self-resetting replacement — which I will solder with consummate
skill
right over the existing blown fuse — but various
webby murmurings
of
the distortive effect such an open causes. So my pitiful wurly was defending itself,
against me!
... And once again I have gloriously wallowed in ignorance. ...
However,
I have
had wonderful adventures, plugging in my real engineer’s
oscilloscope and running an ipad through the wurly for test. And I may
yet blow it to smithereens when I try out my hobbyist power-supply
before/after installing the resetting fuse. ... Yup;
I clipped the beautiful new fuse to the old open one — and the wurly
ceased to make any noise at all! It barks
no more, forever?... Arguably, an improvement, but it’s not any fun
anymore. (I was stupid.)
Scopes
in the Wind
I could tell which way the wind was
blowing
when my real engineer oscilloscope — not the Hitachi in the picture
above, but
my second
real engineer’s
beautiful cheapo Owon PDS 6062T ’scope with battery
power — well, the battery didn’t
work! It’d charge great, and if I unplugged
the scope when it was on, it’d stay on with the battery — but
it wouldn’t turn-on.
Pressing button, nothing. ... This was my second
scope battery, after
the first one got tired, and I bought it from amazon @ 5/23/16,
but apparently didn’t get around to noticing until my triumphant
wurly
dotage. The
old
battery of course still works,
poorly, including as it
undoubtedly does whatever jiggery Owon copy-protected
it with — well, actually, it appears I never understood how to charge
it — supposed to be with the stupid scope lit-up,
apparently. This is totally alien to your average cognitive-impaired
old
techy, ’cause it was important not
to leave CRT
scopes
on,
because the tube’d wear
out! But the LCD scope
screen is immortal
and’ll never
wear out; and of course it’s wonderfully decorative even for the
staggeringly out-of-date pitifully confused techy. ... And maybe the
battery’ll charge better. ... And
so
it
did!
... In dismal conclusion, at least, everything I know
is wrong, which is comforting. ... And all in all, I
think it’s time to button-up the wurly and let it lie fallow for
a
few weeks, or golden years. ... At least the high
voltage’s still there....
Modularity
12/13/20. Since we’re
all gonna die anyway, I figured I’d return to the struggle and try
not
fixing the stupid transistors,
but instead
substitute a tiny hobby pcboard amp, thus faking
the replace-a-board modularity for which my soul
thirsts. Assuming the signal is still with us. ... Which it wasn’t,
when I
finally bothered to check
with my adorable owon
scope.
Pre-Victory Reflections
... It may be hard to believe, but I was actually pretty
good
at repairing various Loveshaw
boards
back in the day, which just bears out the analog engineer’s historic
whine, “anybody
can do digital”,
and I could. ... But these nasty little transistors just spit at me ...
and I, at them....
The
Pitiful
Towering
Victory!
Wed
1/6/21 10:23 am. I have verified an utterly complete repair! The
machine bows supinely before me, begging my tyrannical mastership....
-
Somewhere in
the mists of time: might’ve been
back
in glorious Long Island.
Certainly, it’s been gershtunk through most of the Trump
administration.
But somewhere, I foolishly tried to make the thing louder
by plugging in an external speaker, and it immediately made broken
push-no-pull
klonking noises. I assumed in pitiful weeping guilt I had blown one of
the output transistors.
(I hadn’t.)
-
At 5/02/2018 I was making serious efforts at buying
replacement output transistors.
-
At
3/03/2019 I took the thing apart, and examined fuse F-2, which was
“CLEARLY OPEN” it says in my meticulous chaotic log, so I ordered
“resetting fuses” — i.e., to bridge the blown fuse. The
fact that such
a component was available indicates, at least to my newly more
cynical
perceptions, that
the stupid fuses blow frequently. ... This section of my log is labeled
“THE GREAT
FAILURE” because ...
- @ 3/22/2019, “I didn’t
try turning
it on WITHOUT the fuse first. Because with, and then without, it is
totally without sound.”
-
I
didn’t at this stage bother checking the 15 volt supply, which is
what
powers the transistors which preamplify
the stupid sounds, because I’m
an
idiot. ... Instead I kept taking it further and further apart.
-
@ ~12/23/20 in a new-look revisit,
I finally noticed the missing 15 volts — and
the wire supposedly
connecting it to the preamp board.
... Charmingly,
the preamp wire was dangling in space all these years, having fallen
off
its
super-reliable always-works &*)&()& genuine
murican crimp connector,
still
stuffed onto a pin on the board. ... So the
&*()&)*& crimp
connector was on the pin OK, so super reliable, and the wire wasn’t.
... Eventually I used a
different crimp connection — which, faithlessly, I soldered
the wire to — which I’m sure will last through the Biden
administration, and beyond....
-
Then the rest was EZ-peasey, as the pitiful skilled
technician (me) very
slowly
went thru testing the thing again, with/without new fuse. And of course
everything works perfectly now!
-
But I can still manage to screw it up easy
in the
reassembly!
- But I haven’t ... yet....

Moral of
the Story Wed 1/6/21
Always
assume the machine is evil. Should be Owen’s
Fourth
Law.
... It’s been my prime directive
throughout my storied career,
to always blame the
problem.
... I mean, why not? So much in my technical life has indeed arrived
broken/stupid, built in the quality murican — and now, worldwide
— way.
But in this sad wurly narrative, I
assumed I was at fault! — How foolish
of me! How jejeune!
How
innocent, helpless, silly.
... I
would hasten to add that my beloved wurly still could use mechanical
regulation:
it rattles at any volume,
+ at least the high C sounds a little sour ... all of these symptoms
are
as of yore, and I have no
intention of delving into them; I suspect the average
wurly has been wandering just as fecklessly thru the golden years in
equivalent or worse shape....
Guitar
Wireless versus Wifi
But behold the machine’s revenge:
I thought
I had achieved total wurly domination
but then the wifi went kablooie! ... Tragically, Amazon’d take two
minutes to come up! ... For a few days — maybe a week! ...
I had no idea
it had anything
to do with my resurrected wurly!
...
And perhaps it didn’t, but in the exciting victory-over-wurly
celebrations
I tidied-up the
appalling mess crudding-up the area for years. ... Away
went the knots of extension cords and audio cables. No
more
the random gadgets turned-on/off according to the whims of fate
&
forgotten history. ... I’d been a pitiful elderly recluse
with a bias towards turning-off
my electrical junk, which practice over the
tottering years had been implemented more-or-less randomly in the wurly
sea of chaos. But no más
—
in
the brave
new covid era of
glorious politically-sophisticated
plague, I turned everything on.
... Well actually I confined the power-strip on/off control to a subset
of the menacing mob of gadgets, controlling the rest via their
individual on/off switches....
And after this wild reorganization,
my two guitar
wireless transmitters
were powered up, and the receivers’ beautiful
LEDs glowed
green, which is odd since they
should’ve jammed each other, just as they exuberantly jammed the
wifi. ...
So I turned them off, tedious spoil-sport that I am, and the wifi is
spiffy
again,
actually improved
a little by the wifi antenna gadget I bought in hysterical panic mode.
...
But the machines got their revenge, and I doubt they’re finished....
Simple Guitar
Wireless Fix: $$
But
in the grand rotating world of pain & mystery, I utterly
fixed even this annoying failure....
The
Grand Axxe & Radio Shack Moog Restoration
In commemoration of the Wurly
Triumph, I got my pitiful Axxe
synth plugged-in to my ridiculous mixer setup, and cranky out-of-tune
but
still recognizably monophonic sound is emitted, and I believe that last
time
I
took it apart, probably on Long Island, I hadn’t even heard
of deoxit,
so there is much merriment in store in the golden days ahead.
... My precious Radio
Shack Moog synthesizer , on the other hand, wasn’t even
on
the wounded list, but it’s gone into
the mix and now, along with my ridiculous Gem
combo organ + my beloved cz101,
I
can rock away in the southeast corner of the
music room and amaze passing afrits
or perhaps the woodpecker I
met on a tree outside the window one beautiful morning....
—
the foolhardy programmer
in the time
of the red plague
1. I suppose I
should confess that I probably
knocked the stupid wire out of its iron-clad super-strong crimp while
pitifully trying to maneuver a test clip around to the back of the open
fuse. ... But that just emphasizes the moral
of the story:
the stupid
machine tricked
me!
2.
I remembered later that I had been inspired in this lights-off practice
by
an article in a magazine long gone — which magazine never even
disappeared
into the internet
since there wasn’t any — but the article was about some guy’s
garage/lab burning to a crisp because of a CRT
terminal igniting itself in the night. There are no CRT
terminals anymore, but
there are still bogus/true? stories about anything
that
recharges setting stuff on fire, which I fearfully ignore — ’cause
I can’t
use the rechargeable thing if it doesn’t
get charged, and/or gets left off so it’ll be self-discharged
by the time I need it. I assume that only some
products do
these things, but the internet rule of omerta
forbids any
diss of the sponsor, so it has to be pretended to be a universal
menace. The manufacturers won’t even deny it, because that’d
be certain
suit-bait....
3.
The beloved Radio Shack Moog was purchased after I fiddled with the
thing in a Radio Shack somewhere on Long Island, and admired its
imitation of a tuba! It was very fine. ... At least that’s how I
remember it, although I must get out the instruction booklet from
somewhere and set-up the tuba thing again & see. ... Well I
couldn’t find the book, although it’s probably still around
somewhere,
but I learned it’s actually called the Concertmate MG-1 and I got
a much
more useful PDF copy from this fellow,
who was referred by the wikipedia page.
But sadly the poor little synth goes on
the wounded list, making too-noisy thumps at the beginning of notes ...
arousing cloudy memories of VCA
DC balance problems & some little pot adjustment. ... So I
whacked
his scanned manual material with a pitifully-annoying windows 10
feature that’d print JPGs
to PDF,
but only stupidly, unless I did it 37 times ... because it’s Usux™
... and here is 8MB of the
MG1 manual + service
manual in a zip.

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