Nord User Forum

Hey I would appreciate some help because I have googled this a few times and found no answers.

Half of an octave on the upper manual of my Hamichord organ makes a significant amount of mechanical noise, and it seems like the rubber beneath the keys is missing. It is loud enough to be noticeable during performances and on recordings.in addition, I have noticed that my fingers are a bit sore after playing – playing those keys feels a bit like tapping my finger against a stone!

I have a fantastic keyboard repair person in the area, but he doesn't feel like he is able to fix this type of problem.

Does anybody have a knowledge of how to fix this? Ideally, I would love this organ to have the nice soft field of a Hammond B3, if that means somehow installing felt strips or something like that.

Thank you in advance for your advice.

How old is it? I don't know the Hamichord but I serviced an old vintage synth which had a similar problem. The keyaction was supported by foam dampers, and over the years (this thing was 25 years old at least), the foam had degraded to such an extent that when you squashed it, it stayed squashed instead of springing back.
I would hazard a bet that your keyboard issue is along these lines, but you'll only know when you open it up.

Hey-

Thanks for the reply. The keyboard was built in 2012, and I'm pretty sure it uses the Fatar waterfall action. Perhaps the same action as Nord C2?

Doesn't feel like the foam wore out slowly, so much as perhaps it went completely missing suddenly.

Ah sorry - my answer was a red herring then. You're going to have to open it up and find the problem I guess

One very manual way to fix it temporarily is to put rubber pieces underneath the keys until you find out what's truly wrong with it.