Prepping the pedalboard electrics

Over the past few days I've begun the work of MIDIfying the pedalboard. I ordered a 64-note encoder from Largonet, which appeared to be the most economical practical alternative. Perhaps I will be able to map notes 33-64 to other Hauptwerk functions. All told, it came out to just under 100 USD. It uses an 8x8 scanmatrix, which requires each note to have a diode. I found those easily at RadioShack.

I started work on the pedalboard's contact rail last night. When I demounted the rail from the pedalboard upon acquisition, it looked the the mounting had been redone/butchered - I will have to fix that up. Now, I took the pressboard cover off the top of the contact rail. It seems that there was a bit of water damage to this pedalboard, based on the finish, rust on the screws, and the fact that the glue is loose on the 5 contact blocks in the bottom of the concave arc. Maybe it was in a dank or flood-prone basement for a while. No biggie.

I cut away the old cabling, and wiped everything down with some cleanser. The pressboard plate was very dirty. The contacts themselves are in okay shape; a few are a bit bent. I'm sure there will be some contact regulation in my near future. There are ten available contacts per note; it turns out that several are unused on this board; I will try to make use of these so I won't have to bother with desoldering the old connections. I will cut the buss bar into sections of eight notes for use in the scanmatrix.

Next: solder the diodes onto the contacts, and wire up the positive side. But first: to practice!