Antonelli COMET 2616 80's organ repair

The Antonelli COMET 2616 is a 61 key organ.

Antonelli was an Italian company, established in 1935. During the 80's the Antonelli mostly builds kids learning music instruments, luckily they also have built some instrument, not for kids. Mine is one of those.

Before taking to my home lab this keyboard, I've checked the keypad, to my surprise I've found something with a good key action, so I decided to give this keyboard a try.

General conditions are not good, wood is broken here and there, and keyboard was opened with parts flapping around in the breeze.

First try was to power it on. It does not work.

It turned out it was simply the fuse.

One turned on, I've to replace the speaker. Someone already have removed the original one and replace with a speaker from a TV, since the speaker hole is round but the speaker itself is rectangular shape. Also they hole the wood probably to mount another speaker. By the way, the speaker foam was done.

I've attached a test speaker, now the keyboard sounds, but many buttons and key does not respond well. Oxidation has made his job.

Cleaning buttons and keypad was a bit tedious, but has to be done. I've disassembly the whole keyboard. Both buttons and key has been built using spring contacts.

I've cleaned the contacts using isopropilic alcohol, a toothbrush and a rag. Then I've used some contact cleaner spray using brush and rag.

A better approach should be desolder al the contact, putting all the spring in an aluminium foil, and boil them in salt water. This will reduce silver oxide back to silver, production sulfur hydroxide. Anyway, this time just cleaning it without the complete process did the job, now buttons and key works well.

For the wood, at first I've repaired broken wood with vinylic glue. Then the torn veneer using mastic glue by Bostik. I then I've use some wood filler, and finally I've paint using wood finish just where I repair the wood.

Another piece to repair was the speaker, for that I've removed the horrible holes for the secondary speaker. Instead I've made a nice squared hole, and prepare a piece of wood where I mounted a tweeter. Then I mount the woofer on the main speaker housing.

I've decide to build also a pair of legs for this organ, and sheet music holder. I've wood panels from a wardrobe that I could use, so I take three of them, and use for left and right leg, the third I've used to join the legs. Now the stand is solid and can keep the organ.

I've used the same wood for the music sheet holder.

Now let's talk about the keyboard specification. The keyboard has a RHYTHMS and a ACCOMPANIMENT section with a few rhythms like Rock, Disco, Bossa Nova... and so on. The accompaniment section has the ability to split the keyboard and enable Bass and Chords mode on the left side. TEMPO is a slider potentiometer. The SOLO section is built up on 6 different sounds: FLUTE 16", FLUTE 8", FLUTE 4", PERC 4", BRASS and STRINGS. If enabled each register can sound while the other is enabled, this allows a few interesting sound. Other three sounds are located in the PRESETS section: PIANO, VIBER and PAN FLUTE. EFFECTS like SUSTAIN, LONG (sustain), VIBRATO, DELAY and PHASER can be switched on.

The finished product looks very pretty and sound good too. There are not many sounds available, but the keypad quality is pretty good, and the ability to enable more than one register gives me the change to build up a few pretty sounds. This is definitely not a toy.

Notes

• read risk disclaimer
• excuse my bad english