RE: Stuck Notes

[Dave Bradley <DaveB@datastorm.com>]

>The B-3 I play at church has developed stuck notes (always on) on both
>sets of drawbars on the lower manual only. This affects only the first
>(left hand) drawbar of each set.
>Any and all ideas on how to proceed with a fix are greatly appreciated!

You almost surely have a stuck or bent key contact under one or more
of the keys of the lower manual.  Unfortunately, it is pretty hard to get   
in
and fix.  First, figure out which key is causing the problem.  Pull out   
just
the drawbar that turns on the stuck tone, and play chromatically from the   

bottom of the keyboard up, until you find the key that matches the stuck
frequency.  Strike the key sharply 8 or 10 times to see if the contact   
frees
itself (this is unlikely, but worth a shot).  I recently posted a lengthy   
tale of
some fixes I made to key contacts.  It involved removing all the keys   
from
the manual and removing the top cover plate from the key contact stacks.   
   

Reply privately and I will send it to you if you are interested.

Another technique which can work if the contact is not bent, but just   
caught
on the wrong side of the buss bar, is to prop up the keyboards enough to
get to the buss bar access plate on the left side of the keyboard, remove   
it,
and pull just the bottom buss bar out (this is the buss bar for the   
left-hand
drawbar in each set), then reseat it and hope the contact sprang back in
place.  It can be tricky to reseat the buss bar, and experienced techs   
have
special tricks and ways to hold their tongue to get it back in<g>.   
 However,
this is a lot less work than disassembling the keyboard and going in from   
the
top.  If you decide to try fixing it yourself, I'd recommend trying this   
first.
Good luck!