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Electro 3 Organ Volume Glitch

Postby aruption » 16 Jan 2019, 16:21

So I had to revert to using my Electro 3 a few months ago when some gigs came up that I couldn't bring my Hammond to. I would have needed it for acoustic piano on a couple songs too, but 80% of the sets were Hammond, so at least the E3 had me covered.

As I was getting my presets ready, I noticed that I needed to set the gain on the organ section to max, just to match like a 3-4 gain on the piano section. Maybe it was always that way and I just had never really paid attention to that before? Anyway, at all the rehearsals and gigs that I had to do, the organ volume would randomly jump up and then back down to where I had it (keep in mind the gain was max'd). No gradual change in volume, just sudden jumps up and down (like when you might wiggle a loose jack and the signal would cut in and out). This doesn't happen on the pianos or samples, they have stayed at what I figure are their appropriate volume. Doesn't matter what cable I'm using, and it seems to happen on all three outputs. Moving the volume or gain knobs doesn't seem to have any affect on the problem either.

The only accessory I use is an M-Gear sustain pedal that I've always kept set as a rotary footswitch as well Although I now do the rotary switching with my hands almost exclusively, the pedal is still set up that way. At some point, the plug on the pedal went bad, so right before these rehearsals/gigs started, I replaced the plug and the pedal worked fine again. I hope that it is just a coincidence and that the pedal hasn't messed anything up in the Nord.

Has anyone else had this issue happen? I've done some searching on the internet but haven't come across anyone having this happen to them. I'm supposed to take this thing on a tour in March as my Hammond, I hope I can sort this out by then! :thanx:
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Electro 3 Organ Volume Glitch


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Re: Electro 3 Organ Volume Glitch

Postby baekgaard » 16 Jan 2019, 23:21

Sounds like the swell padal input would have been activated.

So you play Hammond without a swell pedal? If you do normally, but have a pedal, try to plug it in. Could be a problem in the jack connector that is easy to test with a pedal, setting if it works.
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Re: Electro 3 Organ Volume Glitch

Postby aruption » 17 Jan 2019, 01:20

I've read about accidentally plugging something into the control pedal jack can trigger issues like this. That may very well have happened.

For the swell, I've always just used a guitar volume pedal between the Nord's output and the speaker. Just because I've had it for years and it never occurred to me to buy a swell pedal when this works just fine.
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Re: Electro 3 Organ Volume Glitch

Postby pablomastodon » 17 Jan 2019, 08:26

all connections to external devices are protected by EMI filters, small caps really
there have been a very few cases in which one of those on the swell pedal circuit has failed, resulting in the instrument perceiving phantom pedal movements even when no pedal is connected...resulting in intermittent wild changes in volume

perhaps that's what is goin on with your instrument
or perhaps it's something else

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Re: Electro 3 Organ Volume Glitch

Postby baekgaard » 17 Jan 2019, 15:53

Yeah, as Pablo says, an electrical damage is not likely to have been caused by you plugging something into the swell jack input.

It sounded to me as the problem COULD have been caused by the Nord for some reason thinking it had a swell pedal attached. If you had accidentally had your sustain pedal, e.g., connected to the swell pedal input, weird things could happen. Or if something else (kids putting a tip of a pencil, ...) is inside the connector, then maybe strange things could happen.

So I was just thinking that if you would have had a pedal, it would have been easy to connect it and see 1) if it works properly, and 2) maybe would impact the issue when it happens.

I have an old Yamaha stage piano that had a damper input too. It would sometimes randomly dampen the sound when no pedal was connected. Plugging my sustain pedal in and removing it afterwards fixed the problem; I believe this was a mechanical issue with the connector.
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Re: Electro 3 Organ Volume Glitch

Postby aruption » 17 Jan 2019, 18:55

I had been doing some tests in which I would press down a few organ notes and let it record to my computer for a few hours so I could see if anything happened. Tried this with all three control pedal settings and with/without sustain pedal plugged in. I could never get the random jumps in volume, but the volume itself stayed consistently low compared to the piano and sample sections. I compared that by keeping the gain on 5 for all three sections.

So I thought I'd try something. I opened up the Nord, and cleaned every connector and plug with some canned air and DeOxit, and was especially thorough on the pedal jacks. The inside wasn't that dirty to begin with, and there was no visible damage or loose connections - everything solid.

Lo and behold, when I put it back together and fired it up, the organ section was finally equal in volume to the other sections! I've done one recording test so far, and so far the organ has stayed as loud as it should without any drop outs. I figure I will probably do some more "note holding" tests just to be sure, but I think this might have done the trick!
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