February was busy.  So was March for that matter.  But the RPM record was finished in time.  You can listen and/or download here:

http://slowvol.bandcamp.com/

These past few weeks I racked up four more Yamaha PM-1000 channel strips, two for Mr. Scott Evans of Kowloon Walled City fame and two for Mr. Greg Thompson of mixing-a-bunch-of-cool-stuff fame.  They were a little more basic than the ones I did last year.  I recycled the faceplate from the original channel strips this time.  No DI input either, though I did the same EQ mods and replaced all the electrolytic capacitors and transistors.

Josh Fuson picked up a Wurlitzer 200 from our local craigslist, and he and I restored it to it's former glory over the last two weeks or so.

The orginal CL photo:

You can see it was missing the name plate.  What you can't see is that it was also missing a reed (key 21, F#), had a broken sheath on the sustain pedal cable, and was generally filthy.  The chrome legs had been sprayed with silver paint at some point. The power cable was orginal and frayed at both ends.  That's just the stuff we knew about when we picked it up.  We took it back to my place and got straight to work:

Missing the first key felt, and the RCA cable from the reedbar is about to fall apart:

Date-stamp on the end of the key rail:

Date written on the treble side block under the electronics rail.  10 days earlier than the key rail:

Getting ready to clean up the keys and drink whisky.  For some reason, the second key (Bb) had a lead weight attached to the end of it.  If you look closely, you can see the one we did as a test (the fourth D key).:

Closeup of the first key we polished, to show the contrast.  It was the worst of all the keys.  We used 0000 steel wool and some Naptha:

The keys after we polished them all and drank the whisky:

Closeup of the polished keys:

Then we decided to tackle the legs.  It was really easy to get that paint off with some Acetone and steel wool:

Josh stripping the paint off the legs:

The legs after we finished stripping them:

I tackled the electronics the next day.  Recapped the board, replaced the old rectifier diodes with 1N4007s, modded the aux output for a hotter level, replaced the broken neon lamp, cleaned the pots with DeOxit, and placed the rail on the couch for the obligatory "cat in the shot" photo:

Closeup of the board after recapping.  The original Mallory filter caps had a date-stamp of 1966, which means they must have been sitting around for a while before the piano was built.   I don't think they even started building 200s until 1969.  Those are the original output transistors, which is pretty rare to see in a 200.  They're notorious for blowing out:

Josh started cleaning up the lid:

I removed the legs and brackets, masked the nameplate, and prepped the wood for painting:

Josh polished up the hardware while I painted:

Here's the bottom and sustain pedal shell right after painting.  I used a satin oil-based paint, same as the original:

Then Josh replaced the felt strip on the lid just above the keys.  Strips were cut from a larger sheet using a paper cutter:

Then we lubed the felts on the keys with Dry Lube:

Josh installed the keys:

Then he put the new faceplate on the lid:

In the meantime, I replaced the cable on the sustain pedal and reassembled it.  It was a huge timesuck because we didn't have the correct size ferrules to go at the end of the cable, so I had to cut some bigger ones down with a dremel. 

A bunch of Avery IPAs were consumed.

About 5 keys have problems striking.  We think most of the hammers are loose, and therefore crooked and dragging on the way down, and need to be tightened down in the correct position.  That's a huge pain in the ass because the damper mechanisms need to be removed before we can tighten the hammer hinge screws.

The amp board was noisy and distorted, even after replacing the electrolytics.  We fired it up and it sounded like a fuzz pedal.  I ended up having to replace a few ceramic capacitors, the output transistors, and a resistor that had failed open.  It sounds great now.

We buttoned it up last night and polished up the lid with some Armor-All.  It still needs to be tuned and have the action adjusted on a few keys, but the cosmetics, sustain pedal, and electronics are finished.  Here's a shot of it with it's brother, my chopped/modded 206a: