Clavioline repair maybe one of the earliest valve vacuum tube synthesizers
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- Опубліковано 11 лип 2024
- Here is a simple repair on the Clavioline. this is one of the earliest ever synthesizers available from 1947. this was a simple fix though theres a lot more work that needs doing to it to bring it back to good health again.
'It's been well looked after, until I plugged it in'. The story of my life!
That Clavioline is in amazing condition!
This is so helpful, I had no idea about these wacky fuses, and I'm sure I've seen them on a few old bits of equipment I have. Thankyou for the instructional.
That's a fantastic find! I do remember Telstar. :) Glad you got it working. The fact it was set to 110V, tells me it's been here, in the U.S., at one point. That instrument's been all over the place!
Hi Markus! Being a French invention and French made instrument (manufactured by Selmer, renowned for his saxos, oboes and such), its name is indeed pronounced 'OndiolEEne'!
And of course, mains current in France in 1947 was 110V and not yet 220. Oops.
Great video! Nice to learn where Telstar came from - I LOVED that song, along with Runaway, back in the day! Fun to see how it works too! I totally agree, on a beauty like this, less is more, and do only what is absolutely needed, to preserve it.
This again puts music history in a somewhat weird perspective. Many great hits are mainly the first use of a new device (for example an effect pedal) or 'instrument'. The hardware (a new sound) seems to be more important than composing skills. Not meant ot be bitter about. Just an observation.
There was something similar at Superbooth a couple of years ago, although the one I played had a finger controller on a wire. Very interesting piece of history!
that's the ondioline
I love the look of vintage electronics. 15:25 looks like an art piece.
Never see one of these most interesting ! Would like to see circuit diagram of the valve keyboard
That’s a serious piece of synth history. Take good care of it.
I simply love your videos! Thanks!
I’m investigating all things Clavioline…👍
As it’s approaching a significant anniversary of the release of Telstar, I thought I’d record a version..
That was in Feb..
In April I realised the chord structure is “Rhythm Changes..” 😮
July I realised I hadn’t included the “fake” key change prior to last refrain..
I can now play, all the parts, on Uke, Stylophone, and am now so sick of it I never want to hear or play it again..
I’m now ready to record..😃👍
Never seen one of these, thanks for sharing.
It’s easy to laugh and scoff at something like this now with our 64 bit sampling and all, but much respect goes out to the designer. To get even in the ballpark of emulating an acoustic sound with that ancient technology is a HUGE accomplishment.
Thank You Markus Fuller! :)
Thumbs up Indiana USA.
Markus, you really need to replace the waxed paper caps, or, at the very minimum, the one coupling the driver stage to the output stage of the amp. The paper becomes slightly conductive over the years, and any anode voltage leaking through to the grid of the output valve can wreak havoc with the output valve(s) and/or output transformer. Also, when powering vintage valve kit for the first time it's worthwhile using a lamp limiter: www.vintage-radio.com/projects/lamp-limiter.html Good luck with the restoration!
You can sell leaky caps (especially Bumblebees) to guitarists who want to destroy their valve amps from the inside..! 👍👍
Great video Markus. I remember the Clavioline from when I was very young. It was a sensation and a great novelty addition to the piano. Amazing that one has survived and is still working quite well. Thanks for sharing.
Fuse wire, now that's a new one for me. Good to know.
As stated, the paper caps are likely to show a near 100% failure rate (and going by the hum, the filter caps may not be far behind), plus a whole bunch of resistors will need checking alongside the usual contact cleaning. So pretty much par for the course for electronics from this time.
Very interesting. 👍
Beautiful ! I thought there was some kind of vibrato control by the keyboard. This must be a specificity of the Ondioline, a similar instrument, also French and a little older ( 1941) probably more expressive, especially when it was played by a sensitive musician like Jean-Jacques Perrey.
Jean-Jacques Perrey...!... :) .....He was techno, phychadelic, acid and electronic a *looong* way before any other...;) :)
simply listen to his E.V.A. ua-cam.com/video/dXTGN_St-ho/v-deo.html recorded probably within the 60s, as he never done nay publishing by himself back in the days...he worked mainly for french TV scores and jingles and also was a promoteur for moog synths
I have two... one in full working order, the other has broken pivots on the switches... the working one is also the reverb model, though the tank was missing. I've replaced it!
The voltage setting. In France in these times, in the 50s, the AC was not always 220v as today, some cities delivered 110v. Before 1946 there were different electricity companies, with different systems, the National Electricity Company, EDF (Electricité De France) was created in 1946. In the late 40s only 15% of the French territory was in 220v and it took 10 years to unify the electrical system. So having a multi-voltage instrument was not a bad idea in the mid 50s, even if you don't travel abroad.
I have one of these but the Selmer version. Problem is the plastic of the rocker switches being so old it crumbles and they're gradually falling off one after another. Great sounding piece of analogue kit though! Front panel slider is the octave selector and the lower octaves sound much better than the high ones everyone likes to demo.
Hmm! No wonder those instruments sounded off. Crusty caps, oil & wax sounds like a recipy for a real fire or possible melt down; would also check those dog bone resistors for deterioration along with valve plate and grid voltages if you want the instrument to sound as it did when new.
lol not changing caps will not burn your house down. Enough scaremongering
Love the picture at 15:56. Steampunk Synth!
This is a later model Markus. The earlier ones used the larger octal base valves in the keyboard section.
It did sound like a saxophone. Gnarly techno noise percussion thrown in for free. We need bass from this
Amazing stuff! Is this a car boot clavioline?
12:35 reminds of the story of the Uni-vibe. Supposed to emulate a Leslie, but didn't quite succeed to do so. Still got famous of its own.
I have a couple - one in full working order, the other needing some replacement rocker switches...
Check out Mr Carlsons Lab channel for everything valve & wax capacitor related
I wanted to suggest the same thing. According to him these wax capacitors would need to go due to leakage current.
@@analogueavenue No, but expodind devices mainly due to leaky caps...are *not* an answer as well...trust me...i serviced about 100s of old tube radios and at least double digit count Tube operated PA and guitar Amps which had these inside...and i always tested a bunch of these caps after snipped them out....they all had turned into resistors with added capacitance...you can leave these little bastards in...but when your unit blows up, somday...don´t come saying it wasn´t the caps....you have been warned...
see this, if you don´t trust me: ua-cam.com/video/67M7fsbLUIU/v-deo.html
and this is what´s usually happens...: ua-cam.com/video/v9EenBGTzQ4/v-deo.html
So you. have. been. warned. !
@@analogueavenue In this case it is. These are very old waxed paper capacitors. They WILL have failed.
@@analogueavenue if your whatever unit, is younger than 10 years...you may replace only the ones which failed and you´re good to go...but if you have a unit which is older than 40 years....you need to theck any cap (better even any component) anyway....no excuses here (i have seen ones which looked like new and they even tested with no problems on the usual ohm-tester, or any DMM...but i also ocassionally put these guys on my bench type HV-power supply and let them stay at 5mA and see how they peform..sometimes they reach 3/4 of their rated voltage and go short....if they do this in the original envoirement without any form/sort of current limiting...they go BOOOM, no. matter. what. So for me, old wax, tar sealed or wima, sprague, rifa (and the blue ones fender used in brown faces) type foil-caps in tube operated equipment are the ones to change...
And also if you have old philips professional tube equip. change all resistors...i repeat...*all* resistors....if you have, let say an EL6435 140Watts PA tube amp which has 4 times 6/40N output tubes inside (which are about 80bucks per piece) and the grid resistor conected to the negative bias, went/or goes open (in the future) and you haven´t replaced it...you need to buy four of these tubes now to operate the Amp again after replacing a resistor which is about 3 bucks worst case ( when using a one watt metal-oxide type)
These original resistors had been made real nice, carefully sealed with a thick coating of durable plastic type laquer, but plastic shrinks over time, even the most best type does this...and cracks ( that´s why all old wima have to go...cracked coatings, i haven´t seen even one looked all new, tested good) typical failure region is the place where the connection hat and the resistor base is connected, using hi-pressure and heat, together....usually you also can´t see this...but the shrinking process creates a force on that connection and one of those materials gonna give up...and you´re loosing the needed reliable contact... I´ve done serveral postings on my INSTA showing caps, resistors, connectors and stuff for which i found at least no reason for it to be unchanged due to their state/condition and known failure modes...
I don´t want the need to dig into an allready restored unit again....i mean not repaired...restored, just because i left some original, and known to fail component inside, because i was too lazy at that day....no way....
I go even further...in that EL6435 they used three times stacked (wired in series) silicon diodes, simply because there weren´t types with a higher reverse voltage rating available...they tried to minimise spread with added paralleled resistors...but this is one of the main unit failure mode...if one of these diodes goes bad, it usually shorts,...this will cause more voltage to the other both still in series...they overheat and short as well...during one full sine wave cycle the whole rectifier is shorted and usually the filter caps will explode...i´ve seen this mess so many times and cleaned it up as well, that i change the whole..the same is the negative bias power supply...three times stacked switches, open frame with copper plated contacts...i replace that, once clever made, circuitry with a well filtered active MosFet controlled indiviual regulated supply, makes the amp far less noisy and also rock solid reliable...the times when you could buy a new set of output tubes via one of philips local repair centers are long gone....usually you come cross one may be two good tubes per year if you put an automatic inform-email search via ebay...the usual tube suppliers go: "6 dash 40"... what??!
Again: you can do whatever you want, even reform old exotic electrolytic caps over weeks, but for me...no, old Caps, electrolytics and usually even resistors (all these hyped AB, siemens and other) of carbon type: have. to . go. period. ...i don´t want these in my restored units, not repaired...restored units.
Mr Carlson's lab is awesome.
As always, very informativ and what great gear.
I discovered the Akai Force in the video, leaning away from a few boxes. Will there also be a video about it?
Hi I really have not had the chance to play with the akai force just yet but hopefully I may try and do something with it in a future video as long as i can understand it.
Used on Baby You're A Rich Man!
John Lennon rolled an orange around the keyboard, so the story goes. I've done it with mine and it sounds right!
mr Fuller roxx big time! :)
I’ve got a 50s one
Hi Markus - great page - thanks. Not sure if you are interested but someone is selling a Clavioline on eBay in the UK.
Also used by Frank Chacksfield on his recording of “Little Red Monkey”
Hi, I have a Selmer clavioline concert reverb from1962 and the reverb tank input transducer is dead. Do you know what is the impedance of the input transducer / can you please measure the DC resistance of your tank input and output? Maybe your tank have a Gibbs code on it?
Did it enter in for repair, as it seemed to have nothing wrong until the fuse flash? I would have opened it first to take a quick look. You didn't mention the fuse rating you put in. Perhaps it was a good idea to measure the ac current going in to get an idea what fuse to choose. Thank you nice video and I've never seen a Clavioline didn't even know they ever existed!
Markus, on a bit of a tangent here...
Have a look at the Enzo pedal from US company Meris. It's a little analog synth with a filter and some effects in a guitar pedal format, but you don't have to use it with a guitar. There are demos of it being used with drum machines, miced vocals, ect. It does need an incoming audio signal, but it looks like it has the ability to do some very interesting things to the output sound of other devices.
While I'm at it, have a look at the youtube channel called "Knobs". It's a synth related channel with a bit of an unusual but amusing presentation style for their videos (and they have a demo of the Enzo).
Thanks Gareth that sounds like an interesting effect pedal. I will go and have a look.
✌
11:28 Creedence Clearwater Revival - Rude Awakening
I have French one, still works I would like to sell!!
Hi, the captions of function buttons came off on my Ensoniq SQ2, is there a hime way to redo the text on the front panel? Thnx!
Hello I do not know how to put text back onto the buttons. sorry,
3 octave keyboard, F to F. Don't see too many of those.
Well... almost
Of course even older than the clavioline is the Hammond Novachord, a vacuum tube divide-down synthesizer (like a string machine, transistor organ or a synth like the EMS polysynthi, Korg PS3XXX or Polymoog). 72 keys/voices and a limited selection of knobs for tone shaping.
Notably used on some of Vera Lynn's work in the 30's/40's
see: ua-cam.com/video/OvgM_xcx2GI/v-deo.html
Even older than that is the Ondes Martinot. Check that one out. Very peculiar. You've probably have already heard it if you watched the first Ghostbusters, most notably the library scenes
change the caps or your ????
I regret but that I have only one thumb to give for this video
Telstar-tastic
Sorry to say this, Markus....these "strange" capacitors at 16:04 are tar filled rolled foil type ones...and you *need* to change them...all...they do "funny" things if they need to block any serious DC-voltage....i´m very surprised that your unit does even work...usually these condensers (that´s what they used to be called back then;) simply blow up....
Also the same thing goes for all these wax filled (these yellow types) capacitors...upps i need to say condensers...they´re pretty much all leaky by today...Go change them as well, please...if you don´t want to encounter some fire or explosion(s) inside within some hours after powering this old unit.
Hi yes I agree they must be changed though I did not have enough replacements in stock to get started. time to make the shopping list, it’s worth saving.
@@markusfuller of course it´s worth it....:)
is that a condom wrapper on the table?
One downvoter prefers VSTs ;)
All those caps should've been replaced. Also in the keyboard section. And the resistors should've been at least tested for value. It is sad to let a well kept equipment like this die because of faulty caps. It won't last 50 years for sure.
those caps are definitely bad, in any other case i would change all of it no questions, but that beautiful thing i wouldnt touch a single solder, would keep it clean and never apply power. in a perfect world would have a gorgeous original like that and a second one to restore and play.
17:04 Slight editing issue, but otherwise interesting video!
Vangelis used one of these during the period of his album ‘Earth.’ Watch at about 6 minutes at this video: ua-cam.com/video/UZKJ6zkhpE0/v-deo.html
That fuse design is an accident waiting to happen.
awful sound at the beginning probabely comes from old dried out caps in the power supply. Don't touch the foil capacitors, unless you can get real good substitute!
Markus is a "Jarre VIP"? ;)
rubbish