Mini Mouse House

My husband posted pics of a Mini we just opened up over on the Moog Music Forum

Heavy duty, custom-made 2600 keyboard cable

Click here for eBay auction.

I'm heading to the post office early tomorrow morning, so if you buy it before 8am pacific, it will ship tomorrow!

Workspace

Last week, I did my first cleaning/rebushing job on a Minimoog keyboard in many, many moons.
I decided to take a picture of how I like like to set my work space up when I do this.

1. Two trash bags spread out. One to keep the keybed on, and one to put the keys on while they're being cleaned


2. Soft mallet to help remove stubborn keys from keybed


3. Special tool for the springs


4. Screwdriver for tightening key screws. (I actually used a 1/4, which is a size bigger than in this picture.)


5. Old wire cutters for removing stubborn bushings


6. Pliers, just in case


7. iPod, for making work more enjoyable


8. Cotton swabs, for various cleaning uses


9. Glass cleaner, for cleaning the keytops


10. Simple green, for cleaning the metal part of the keys


11. Glass jar with lid for little dome thingies (I leave cleaning these up to my husband.)


12. Bin to put springs in


13. Old cotton t-shirt for cleaning keytops

Thoughts on springs

Taking springs off of a keyboard action is no small feat. It requires a lot more hand control and precision than most people would think. If you don't put them on or take them off correctly, you risk a)sending the spring flying in some random direction and landing who knows where, b)stretching the coils the spring.

We'll skip over A for now, mainly because I've done that more times than I care to remember. ;-)

Stretching a spring's coils makes it useless, as there's no way to repair it. We have the means to replace these springs, and I've definitely replaced more springs than I've sent springs flying!

I'm not sure what the point to this post is... maybe I'm just rambling about keyboard springs 'cause some unknown person botched up nearly all the springs on a Mini (see previous post). I can only speculate that this person probably thought working on a keyboard action was easy.

Bad spring, good spring...

All the springs that were removed from a Minimoog's action. I swear, the Mini in question was the victim of malpractice. :(

Underneath a 2600 Keyboard

This is a shot of the bottom of an Arp 2600 keyboard. You can see the 2600 in the background. :)

I rarely work on these types of keyboards alone, as I'm more used to the Minimoog type.