Alright boys and girls. Thought you'd like an update from your happy tonewheel man.
Review of TWG restoration project:
Purpose: To have fun and reproduce the very heart around which a tonewheel organ is built. This will not be a money-making monster, I'm fairly certain, but it can be made to at least break even. I do not have a skewed view of what the market is for this thing, so I'm not expecting the door to be blown down with sales. Hence the heavy reliance on those whose aquaintances I've made over the years to donate their time or provide services at a reduced cost. Calling in favors hasn't hurt either. The whole purpose is to "keep 'em spinnin'". While I'm not hurrying this, I'm amazed at what has been accomplished so far.
What we have:
As I bring new folks with skills on line, I'm organizing and delegating tasks. These folks are working on their respective issues as they get time and means. Here's what's lined up so far:
1) Generating coils and filter transformers to be reproduced by the folks who build the transformers for my amps. A side note on this: I am going to work with these folks to provide exact replacement and upgade transformers for our Hammonds and Leslies at a reasonable price. Stay tuned for more on this.
2) I have contacted my former mentor's family in Pittsburgh and all the TWG jigs and repair tools I used 25 years ago are on the way to me. These were donated to the cause.
3) My pattern maker friend is ready to set up his CAD program for multiple drilling of end plates, etc. This guy's a jazz nut, loves Smith and DeFrancesco. Doneted all the R & D time.
4) Another jazz nut in Albuquerque will do the laser cutting of all tonewheels, gears, etc. He is also a friend of the patternmaker, so they've already sat down to a strategy meeting. He, too, is donating his R & D time.
5) Self-starting syncronous motors at a variety of RPMs for both the US and UK market have been sourced. Later on we'll see what's the best fit. All of us have agreed that this would be the best way to go, as opposed to fitting seperate start and run motors. However, the pattern maker suggested that we leave the original Hammond mount pattern in place for both motors, the idea being that we could offer the TWG without motors/scanner for those who have good ones.
6) I've initiated a patent search to see what the current status of the TWG patent(s) is/are at present, but I haven't made much progress, as I'm not very good at this. The thing is, it's important to ascertain the staus of the patents before too much effort is put into this. Moving this up to the front burner. Anyone have any ideas as to how to be sure the TWG patents are dead?
Now, zoners, what all my folks are yelling for now is a defunct TWG to disect. Do any of you have a dead TWG laying around you'd like to donate to the cause? Email me if you do. It does NOT have to work.
Regular updates of this project will be forwarded to the Zone.
Raul
