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  #1  
Old 11-21-2015, 09:06 PM
Captainclock Captainclock is offline
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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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Old 11-21-2015, 09:32 PM
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That was probably a service instrument for tuning their electronic organs.
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  #3  
Old 11-22-2015, 12:35 AM
Captainclock Captainclock is offline
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Originally Posted by Electronic M View Post
That was probably a service instrument for tuning their electronic organs.
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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Old 11-22-2015, 09:07 AM
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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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Old 11-22-2015, 11:05 AM
dieseljeep dieseljeep is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Captainclock View Post
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.
If the neon lamps are on the inside, they might be used as a voltage regulator or a simple tone generator.
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Old 11-22-2015, 11:13 AM
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how do you USE the thing?
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Old 11-22-2015, 11:15 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Captainclock View Post
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...
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Originally Posted by rca2000 View Post
how do you USE the thing?
You should take a look on YouTube to see how these work.
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Old 11-22-2015, 11:43 AM
Olorin67 Olorin67 is offline
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my high school had one, before band concerts they made everyone tune up.
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Old 11-22-2015, 01:08 PM
Captainclock Captainclock is offline
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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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Old 11-22-2015, 01:46 PM
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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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Old 11-22-2015, 03:59 PM
Captainclock Captainclock is offline
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Originally Posted by davet753 View Post
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.
Well that's good to know, if I ever find an old Conn organ someday I might be able to use this for that. And well I guess that's a mistake we won't ever try to make again, as far as trying to leave the chorus tab on while trying to tune the organ.

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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Old 11-22-2015, 04:42 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Captainclock View Post
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.)
Hope you fixed the amp, you can get decent money for tube amps from organs.

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.
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Old 11-22-2015, 05:39 PM
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Here's one working.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgH1cca55m4
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  #14  
Old 11-22-2015, 06:28 PM
Captainclock Captainclock is offline
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Originally Posted by Electronic M View Post
Hope you fixed the amp, you can get decent money for tube amps from organs.

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.
No, sadly enough I didn't end up restoring that amp, I ended up just scrapping it because it was in too bad of shape for me to do anything with plus the wiring underneath was a rats nest (figuratively not literally) and it would of taken me forever to try and get where everything went straightened out seeing as I didn't even have a schematic for it or anything and didn't know where to source one for it, plus I it would of been a little too costly to try and replace the output transformers on it so that the output channels would of been consistent wattage wise (it was a 3 channel amp with 2 treble channels and a bass channel) and the channels weren't matched up wattage wise because one of the treble channels was for the chorus generator, and the other was the plain audio output then you had the bass channel for the lower notes and the pedals.
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Old 11-22-2015, 06:33 PM
Captainclock Captainclock is offline
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Mine sadly enough is missing the original mike, instead it came with an old Radio Shack/Realistic Floor mike (which I ended up giving to my church to use) and it also is missing its cover. But other than that it works perfectly, even the tone generator works for giving off the different pitches for what you want to tune, no hum or anything. What's cool is that it uses all mylar capacitors so it should be trouble free (and is probably why its been trouble free for all these years.)

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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