|
re: .0
Sounds like Deagan chimes. I worked on restoring a set of them once
upon a time when WPI still had them.
For the curious, the carillon was much like a player piano. It had
wax paper rolls, which were about 7" wide, with perforations in them.
The perforations were "read" by a comb-like set of feelers which,
when they fell through the holes, contacted a drum (they were wired
as ground, so you wouldn't get hurt changing reels). In addition,
one track on the side was the damper. 37 notes plus damper, plus
an extra control sense track.
The player mechanism had autorepeat, fast forward, rewind, and
of course, play. You could "program" the player to rewind at the end,
for example, and start over next playtime.
The timer was amazing. There was a clock, of course, and a pinwheel
with a brush in it which turned inside the pinwheel. Each pin was
wired (hot - 117VAC), as a sequence - in our case Westminster chime,
for the hour - rests were programmed as NC pins. The hours chime was
much like a normal clock chime, except that it triggered a set of
two (octave, C) chimes via relays. The whole thing made a wondrous
racket when in operation. If power failed, a relay would trip so it
wouldn't come back up online, and a big red light would turn on.
There was also a coupler switch with a mongo multipole relay (38 pole,
double throw) to couple the carillon with the organ down in the hall,
again, with mongo multi-cable, etc.
The carillon itself was a 65 pound harp assembly with metal bars
arranged in two ranks. The longest bar was two feet (lo C). The
pickups were wired in parallel, lo-imp, and there were 37 of them.
We had an old Altec transformer to get them to hi-imp. You tuned them
by loosening two screws at the bottom of the assembly and sliding the
bars up or down. The dampers (again, 37 of them) were solenoid plungers
with felt dampers, which retracted when the strikers (also solenoid
plungers, but normally retracted) had power applied, OR if the "all
dampers up" relay was closed. Basically if you applied power to any
one note enable, the striker would pulse out, strike the bar, as
the damper retracted, and then retract halfway. Disable the line,
the damper would settle back out, the striker would retract.
There were something like 40-50 rolls, each with 1-4 songs on it.
You set the play time on the control panel with a wire jumper, for
instance, at 12:00 (after the chimes sounded, since the trigger
happened in the pinwheel at the end, IF you had the hour trip pin
on a particular hour)...
The speakers for this monster where in the bell tower, there were
16 big old horns facing in an omnidirectional pattern on a pole,
all in a series/parallel arrangement so you got 4 ohms at the
connection. We powered it with a big old hacked 600W amp that originally
was a DC motor drive (new input stage, voila!)
It was in the process of being chucked at the end of my freshman year,
since it hadn't worked in years. I saved it from the dump, and had
it running in my apartment, much to my roommate's dismay. The next year,
it turned out some nostalgic alumni asked about it, and word got back to
me to see if I would reinstall it. A couple of us worked for about
2 months on and off, got it running just after Thanksgiving, and
it ran for a couple more years, before the alumni association decided
that it really did need to be replaced, so they bought a "new carillon",
which consisted of an electronic cassette player (the big broadcast
cassettes), a new timer, and a new amp. Everything except the chimes
was recorded, and the Westminster hour chimes were synthesized, I
guess. I don't remember the name of the manufacturer, but I didn't care
for the sound (call me a purist, ok?). Sorry. You could ask someone
at WPI if they'd check and see what the name is.
/pjh
|