[HAM] Recapping

[Kon Zissis]

Hi Scott and everyone.
A fellow list member here in Melbourne Australia owns a wax capped  1937
BC  organ without the manual tapering, and he has converted it to a
"BC3" by adding an AO28 preamp and the percussion  effect. 
The wax capacitors on this 1937 BC are covered with a reddish brown
cardboard cover  instead of being  plain cased like they are on most
other wax capped organs that I have come across , and this BC sounds
very nice  as it is with a clear  and bright sound despite the fact that
the wax caps are 71 years old. The TG notes 49 to 91  sounded nice and
clean instead of having the more hollow sound that I have heard with
some other wax capped organs.
 
I measured the TG output levels and the TG notes 49 to 91 have  similar
output levels to that of  many typical early 1960's wax capped organs.
 
The owner of the 1937 BC also has a chopped C3 organ with an AO28 preamp
and a  wax capped TG that was salvaged from an early 1950's B2 or C2
organ. The wax caps from this early 1950's  TG  have the regular plain
cases.
Both organs were connected together  through the same Leslie 760 and
when I played both organs with the same drawbar settings and volume
levels ,  the  1937 BC sounded better with a clearer sound. The C3 chop
organ sounded muddier and after I measured the TG output levels  I
noticed that the output levels of the TG notes 49 to 91 were weaker than
the TG notes 49 to 91  of the 1937 BC.
 
This seems to be further evidence that the card board  covered wax
capacitors might have been better preserved and not drifted up in mfd
values as much as the plain cased wax caps  have drifted up in mfd
value.
 
By the way , even though the C3 manuals have the normal manual tapering
thus resulting in a very different sound on the first two octaves and
the last two octave of the manuals compared to the organs such as the
BC's with serial numbers below 5075 which have  the non  tapered manuals
, the middle octave of the manuals on the B3 , C3 etc have the same
resistance wire values ( approximately 24 ohms )  for all nine drawbar
key contacts  so therefore the organ sound on the middle octave of the
manuals follows a similar pattern as that of the organs  with the non
tapered manuals ( 16 ohms for all key contacts ) .
Because of this I was able to do a more  accurate A/B comparison with
the 1937 BC and the C3 chop when playing  on the middle octave of the
manuals  , and  on the middle octave  of the manuals the BC still
sounded better than the C3 chop organ.
All the best.
Kon
 
Scott Hawthorn wrote:
The later cardboard-covered "wax caps" lasted much longer, so I've been 
told. Every organ like that I've ever seen sounded terrific.