Fitting An Emulator into the Yamaha AR Organ

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Lynn McCarthy
5 years ago
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Fitting An Emulator into the Yamaha AR Organ As performed by Les White and Frank Kemplay

top board assemblywhich slides forwards and off (remove music rest first).

stored we come to the front of the organ to release the keyboards.

there s only 6 (3 at each end) [pics 11 and 12 arrowed and circled in red] to be removed

1 Fitting An Emulator into the Yamaha AR Organ As performed by Les White and Frank Kemplay May 2011 On the upper rear panel remove the top line of 3 screws to allow removal of the top board assemblywhich slides forwards and off (remove music rest first). With the Top board assembly removed the fall cover can simply be lifted off and set aside. Once the Top board assembly has been removed and set aside and loose screws safely stored we come to the front of the organ to release the keyboards. This bit looks scary as there are lots of screws underneath the keyboard overhang but there s only 6 (3 at each end) [pics 11 and 12 arrowed and circled in red] to be removed and these are the most obvious ones (big screws with square backing plates) Looking in to the revealed organ innards there are 2 very obvious butterfly wing nuts [pics 13 and 14 - arrowed] on top of the rear pivots

2 which need to be removed and this allows the entire keyboard assembly to be lifted as one unit (Don t lift using the keys!) It s possible to slip you fingers under the extreme edges of the control panel either side of the lower keyboard and lift the whole thing up such that it stands almost vertical The wings nuts can be reinserted in to a second set of holes to safely hold the keyboards in this position don t let it over swing back as this may pull out cables and damage the tin back panel. With the keyboards raised you can see a large shield cover this shield protects the electronics / amps from damage by the fall cover once you open the organ Depending on how lucky you are you may not need to remove or loosen this cover! - see later Now we re down to it! Picture 15 shows the old Floppy Drive but I ve pulled the Ribbon Cable and yellow / black power leads off. I ve arrowed the four screws that need to be removed to allow the old floppy drive to be lifted out. Remove the brackets from the floppy drive and attach them to the new Emulator using the original Yamaha screws There s no danger of these screws damaging anything inside the Emulator as I took the cover off mine to check. Preparation of the Emulator

As you can see in Picture 16 Frank s made a nice job with the Red button which was Ç2 from Maplin (part no. N91AP).

3 I ordered a Yamaha ready Emulator from China The picture on Ebay showed the unit to have the Red button but the item delivered lacked this button! s to the supplier remain un-answered so I set about retro- fitting a button or rather I left Frank to it while I went off on holiday. As you can see in Picture 16 Frank s made a nice job with the Red button which was Ç2 from Maplin (part no. N91AP). Frank utilised a mounting point within the Emulator to retain the button but this required a bit of creativity - see the scan I ve appended at the end. This mounting point is used in the red button equipped Emulator to locate the red buttons circuit board but the Maplin switch is all self contained and just needs two wires soldered to the terminals. Frank tells me he made a little copper bracket which sits in the mounting point which he adjusted to push the switch fully forward through the front plate It looks original and works brilliantly. Frank s sketch also shows an alternative means of fixing, which is an angled plate which can be glued to the bottom of the switch box, the plate has a cut out to sit over the mounting point. My Emulator had a little indent in it to locate the middle of the button Frank used this to drill a hole for the button to come through which he finished off with a small round file. The two wires from the switch connect to some vertical pins on a circuit board to the rear of the Emulator these pins are not covered by the Emulators top plate and are easily identified as they are currently joined together with a jumper plug (making the circuit permanently ON ) The two wires

from the switch need to be terminated with suitable computer circuit board pin connectors. Frank happened to have a spare but these must be easily available from computer building stores.

4 from the switch need to be terminated with suitable computer circuit board pin connectors. Frank happened to have a spare but these must be easily available from computer building stores. Once your switch lead is ready remove the jumper connector and plug in the switch lead. Refit the top cover to the Emulator and fix the Emulator into the Organ. Connect up the ribbon controller (there s only one place it can go) and power lead. The power lead may be too short but additional length should easily be achievable. In my case I just removed the 4 screws from the front edge of the shield cover (you can see the cable disappears under here) and tugged just a little until I was happy I had enough such that there was no pull on the connector. In Franks case (Frank had test fitted my Emulator into his AR-100 while I was away) this cable was too tight and nipped under the shield cover so Frank removed the shield cover completely (see instructions for Splitting the AR) and removed a couple of cable ties to gain sufficient additional cable. The finished job looks original and works beautifully. A Note on the Software Bob s Emulator software works fine using Windows XP but I couldn t get it to format the flash drive or use it for copying tracks using my main PC which runs Vista fortunately my son s laptop uses XP. The software, even using XP, is a bit old fashioned and clunky but does the job.

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