I purchased the entire lot of parts on Ebay for $30 shipped to my door. I had done enough research that I knew of 2 parts in particular that could recover that value, while still leaving 95% of the parts!
I have been getting mixed thoughts when people see a Hammond organ’s tone boards stripped bare, but guys & gals I was sold it this way. What else would you do with random boards from unknown locations in an unknown precise year of manufacturing due to age? What I did is recycling 101. I took a small investment ($30) and tried to see if I could turn that over for profit, I didn’t expect the final value in a piece by piece sale to near $600!! This was mostly pure luck on my part, but I do know vintage hardware and I know what stands the test of time and what doesn’t. Most capacitors, even non-electrolytic will have their electrolyte change over the first 20 years or so and by the time you check the part again, the value is way off from the stock ratings. This is the later mentioned, “20 year curse” for caps.
**Update: I found out over on TDPRI (Telecaster Discussion Page Reissue) the ceramic capacitors with a D on them (called “Circle D” caps on Ebay) are made by Cornell Dubilier!! These bring in anywhere from $10-$25 each. I have about 30 of them from the organ peg board pulls!
So I took my trusty ole Weller WESD51 digital soldering station with a large conical tip. I basically just kept dipping the tip of the iron in a tip tinner. I have tried both Thermaltronics and Chip Quik, both get the job done. So stick the entire end of the tip into the container and let the tinner bubble and collect all over your iron. You should also do this before you store it for a long time. This protects your tip and overtime it will build up a protective alloy. Okay, enough talk about our tips and how we tin them.
I had to use a temperature of 575F to get the pegs and the solder they were soaked in to turn back into a liquid more time! Without the tip tinner available to me, I probably would have lost more of the components in the pull. Be patient if you ever work with a peg board of the style shown above, also throwing some flux on it never hurt anyone!
Now when you looked at picture #1 of how it arrived, did you expect this many parts to come out of it? I didn’t believe it was that densely packed until I started to desolder every part.
I will be holding on to some of these for my own HiFi use, but I’ll probably sell half of it. To make it clear, I didn’t tear these out of an instrument, someone else did and I bought it!
Thanks for reading!