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1950s C.G. Conn Strobotuner Piano Tuner
Hello Everyone, today I was given a 1950s vintage C.G. Conn Strobotuner that was made in Elkhart, Indiana (where I'm from and have proudly called home since I was born in 1988) anyways its actually the same company that also made the famous Conn Organs and the Conn Band Instruments (now called Conn-Selmer) and anyways I thought this was interesting because its a piece of local history and the best part is, it still works perfectly after all these years (it kind of helps that it was made with all mylar capacitors, and high quality ones at that) and it has a push-pull 6AQ5 amplifier for the tone generator function (which uses an external speaker connection for hooking up an external audio monitor/speaker).
I hope you guys enjoy this nice treat. -Levi |
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That was probably a service instrument for tuning their electronic organs.
__________________
Tom C. Zenith: The quality stays in EVEN after the name falls off! What I want. --> http://www.videokarma.org/showpost.p...62&postcount=4 |
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Could of been as well it does have a 1/4" input jack on the front and a single RCA jack on the back for a speaker to be hooked up for an audible pitch tone to be put out so you can hear the note you're tuning (kind of like an electronic tuning fork or pitch pipe) although the reason why I think this might of been used for instruments like the piano or even band instruments is because it came to me with a Radio Shack/Realistic floor mic attached to the unit which would tell me that it was being used at one time to tune acoustical instruments and not just electronic instruments. I did noticed though that the 2 neon bulbs in the unit will eventually need to be replaced because they aren't glowing as bright as they should be, with very little neon glow left around the cathode of the neon bulbs.
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When I was in the school band in Jr. High and High school back in the previous century 1964-'69, there was one of those in the band hall to help keep everyone in tune.
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Audiokarma |
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how do you USE the thing?
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my high school had one, before band concerts they made everyone tune up.
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Its definitely a fascninating piece to say the least epsecially considering that it was made in the same town I was born in.
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Conn built them for (among other things) tuning the organs the company also turned out. They could, of course, be used for tuning other instruments.
I borrowed one years ago to tune my Conn organ, and it worked very well. The only problem was when I finished, I realized I had the "chorus" tab depressed. The chorus circuit worked by slightly throwing the entire instrument out of tune, which meant I tuned all the oscillators perfectly, when they were not meant to be. I'll never make that mistake again. |
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Speaking of old Conn organs, I once found an old Conn Organ chassis and amplifier at my local computer store in their freebie pile so I took and brought it home with me and salvaged as many of the tubes out of it as I could (there were probably close to 70 tubes in the organ originally and I was able to salvage about 60 of the tubes and they were all the original Conn branded tubes, that were made by companies like RCA and GE, and they all still tested excellent yet on my tube tester.) Also my church camp I went to when I was growing up had an old Conn Organ in one of their lodges, that was then trashed later on because it supposedly wasn't working, they also trashed several old Hammond organs that they also supposedly thought didn't work (which I knew better than that and they all worked because I had played nearly all of the organs they had on their grounds and they still worked fine.) |
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Some time back I got a Baldwin tube organ for 10$ at a thrift....Given that 6SN7s go for about $10 a pop and it had IIRC around 10 in it, some 12AU7s, 12AX7s, and a 2 channel tube amp it was a no-brainer purchase. I later rewired the amp chassis to use a standard power cord, and audio inputs (it used some funky plugs to connect to the other chassis), and sold the amp for close to $200. Eventually I'll part out the rest of the chassis.
__________________
Tom C. Zenith: The quality stays in EVEN after the name falls off! What I want. --> http://www.videokarma.org/showpost.p...62&postcount=4 |
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I also need to replace the screws in the back because I don't think they're the original screws first of all, and secondly they're stripped out (they turn continuously in the hole for the screws which tells me that either the screws are stripped, they aren't the original screws as they're more than likely too short or they holes are stripped.) Last edited by Captainclock; 11-22-2015 at 10:25 PM. |
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