After a loooong hiatus I finally got to start working on actually rewiring my pedals!! Marvin was busy and I didn’t wanna go ahead without him in case I make a colossal mess of everything. Plus he’s the one with the soldering iron.
We started working around 7:30pm and didn’t finish till close to 2am!! :p
Also, if this stuff interests you, you can help by reposting this and/or visiting my indiegogo at http://igg.me/at/buildahauptwerkorgan and making a small contribution. 🙂 Thanks in advance!
YOU NEED:
1. Your pedalboard
2. A friend
3. Screw drivers
4. Cable ties
5. Emory cloth
6. Soft bristled toothbrush
7. Pliers
8. Soldering iron & solder
9. Midi encoder (I’m using the pedal and swell encoder from DTS), with Molex connectors
10. Small screws to screw encoder to board
11. The new wires to connect to the encoder (circuit) board (Mr. Max Mayse made mine for me, thanks! Not sure how you make them…)
12. Main/common wire (mine’s yellow, it’ll be soldered to the wire that runs through to all the contact blocks and basically allows power to run through them when you plug it in to a power source)
13. Midi adaptor (midi out to USB)
14. Power supply adaptor thingy
BEFORE:
AFTER:
It’s almost like we knew exactly what we’re doing! (We didn’t)
1. Turn pedalboard over, with #1 (low c) on the left and #32 (G) on the right.
2. Took the contact rail off carefully, minding all the contact wires, and put it on top of the board; Taking only the outer two screws out for each side so it doesn’t fall onto the board and mess all the contact wires up even if we let go. 
3. Snipping the old wires off. All of them.
Snipped wires: 
4. Took the cover off the contact rail to reveal all the wires underneath: 
Used an old soft bristle toothbrush to clean off the dust really carefully. (Marvin, “I feel like an archeologist!”)
5. Snip. Snip. Snip!
Snipping the twine-like stuff holding the wires to the rail:
the old wires:
Snipping the wires close to where it was soldered to the block: 
No more wires!
6. Clean the contact wires and the metal plates with an Emory cloth: 
Nice and shiny! You don’t need to clean the entire metal plate, just the top part that would be making contact with the contact wires.
7. Place the rail back where it was originally, but don’t put the screws back in yet; will need to turn it over again to solder the wires. Staple the bunch of cables to the side of the pedalboard. (with a staple gun, not your desk stapler…)Pulling out the cables out from the little grey tubing. Fun!
They’re color coded!!!
8. Thread each wire through each hole for its corresponding note. Snip off excess but make sure there’s enough to reach the solder point on the contact block. 
9. Cable tie the wires through each hole. Make it all nice and neat!! I used pink and black cable ties and alternated the colors, looks cool! 
10. Snip off ends of the cable ties parts sticking out: 
11. THE SOLDERING IRON DUN DUN DUN!!! (Set to 800 F°) 
12. Strip the ends of each wire to expose the wire inside. Wrap it around the little tiny metal pole for each contact block. 
13. Take soldering iron out of the station, touch the tippy point of the iron to the pole that has the wire wrapped around. Melt the solder over it, make sure it’s sealed and connected. Repeat 32 times for all the notes haha. 
Soldering the last one, you can see how excited I am tehee!
14. Two wires from each contact is connected to a bus wire or ‘common’ for all the keys. Solder the main/common (yellow) wire to anywhere on that common wire; pick a point between 2 contact blocks. We chose the spot that the original common wire was soldered to, close to where we want to mount the midi circuit board. 
common wire: the long silverish one there in the pic.
15. Screw the cover back over the contacts and put the rail back where it was, screw everything back in. 
ALMOST DONE!!!
16. Mount the circuit board to the top of the pedals.
17. Stick the common wire into the GND (ground) on midi circuit board, turn the little screw on top to hold the wire in place. 
18. Power supply: stick the positive end into PLUS and the negative into the other hole for GND. Thanks again, Mr. Mayse for the power supply, making the knot in the positive and marking it with a sharpie! 
19. Stick the molex connectors onto the circuit board!! 
20. Connect MIDI to USB adaptor to the circuit board 🙂 
ALL DONE!!!!
Just turn the pedal back over. Plug the power in. Connect the pedals to your computer and run HAUPTWERK! It should pick up that you have pedals plugged in, and you can then configure it to recognize note and highest. AND PLAY!!!
I thought I didn’t solder the last 3 notes right but turns out St. Ann’s which was the organ I was running didn’t have sound samples for those notes.
SOO HAPPY!!!! *SQUEAL!!!*
Hauptwerk Pipe Organ Project 
18 responses to “JUST REWIRED MY PEDALS!!!!”
Thanks for the pix! Good luck to you!!
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Thank you, sir!! 🙂
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After some research, I came across your blog. I am so inspired!!. I congratulate you on the progress you have made so far. I just got an old pedal board I want to rewire for MIDI. I want to find out how you made the thumb pistons I saw on your blog
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Hello!
Sorry didn’t reply sooner haha.
The thumb Pistons on my current manuals were purchased from MIDIWORKS.
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Who is Mr. Max Mayse? I am building a pedal board and want to use the PIC-1 like you did. Would it be possible to get his business contact info so I can inquire further?
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Hey! You can search for him on FB and message him directly. I’ll let him know to expect a message from you!
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Hi Angelina. Thanks to Google, I happened to find this article about rewiring your pedals and the other articles on your blog, which will be a big help to me on my Hauptwerk project that I just started. I have an old pedalboard, bench, and music rack, and I just took off the board holding the contact blocks, and I wondered to myself, now what do I do. Thanks to your article, now I know. I’ll let you know how the project goes.
Thanks,
Scott
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Hey Scott! Nice to e-meet you!! Internet is a wonderful thing isn’t it? Haha anyways, let me know how it goes and feel free to find and message me on FB or something if you have questions. I did this a while ago but my brains are yours to pick if you think that’ll help in any way!! Good luck!!!
Angelina
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Thanks for a great work guide. I’m asking why you ran new wiring to the contacts and not just take the existing wires (from the thick cable you cut) to the midi board?
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Michael, if you pedalboard uses similar contact blocks as Angelina’s, you will have multiple old wires per note. Also, the midi card you need to use requires only one wire per note, so trying to figure out which of the existing wires to use would be a big challenge. Also, if you pedalboard is old like mine was, it will use what appears to be aluminum wiring that has cotton insulation on it, which doesn’t seem like safe insulation material. I first had trouble finding new wiring that was 26 gauge, which is what the midi card requires, but I then found it on showmecables.com. Search for 25 Conductor 26 AWG Stranded PVC Cable and you’ll find it. You’ll have to remove the protective covering to get the individual wiring out. Another tip for you is to search Youtube for how to strip thin wires. You’ll find videos that show using a flame briefly to heat up the end of the wire and then you can pull the insulation off without having to use a tool. I haven’t tried it yet, but I’ll be doing that in the next week. I’ve been following the steps in Angelina’s blog and so far so good. I’ve done about everything I can before the actual wiring and soldering. Back to Youtube for me to review how to solder properly, then I’ll be doing it on my pedalboard. So close to being done. Can’t wait to hook up the pedalboard and keyboards to computer 🙂
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Thanks Scott. Some people who have done this say when using new wiring to replace the “blade across four wires” switch with reed switches so all is new. My pedal board plays fine so first I’m going like shown here, however, my TC-1 has a termination board for the pedal wires where the four all come together in the console. I’m going to connect to this first and give it a try because if this works I have the advantage that I can keep the power supply and the midi board inside the console and can still unplug the pedalboard if I need move organ around. If you or anyone sees any problem here let me know.
Thanks for the wire sourcing link – in desperation I had bought some 40 strand ribbon cable but how the card will see that plus the board and existing wires we will see. I’ll press on an report back on how it goes. If my pedalboard is a success then everything else is gutted and in go two new keyboards with pistons. Like you I’m getting excited.
Right now I have a KORG PA588 arranger connected to Hauptwerk on a mac and on to a 250 w/channel stereo Krell amp running B&W 801 studio monitors and everyone is blown away at the realism.
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Michael, regarding the comment about being able to disconnect the pedal and move the organ around, I’ve decided to mount the midi board and power supply for the pedalboard on the right side of the pedalboard. All I’ll have to do is disconnect the midi in/out cable and unplug the power cord, and then the pedalboard is completely free to be moved around. Once I get everything wired up and working, I’ll build a wooden cover to protect the midi board and power supply. Until then, the pedalboard staying downstairs in my workshop. I don’t want to take a chance to banging into something and damaging the midi board if I moved it upstairs to my music studio. I don’t know much about your setup, so I can’t comment about any issues with your plan. Good luck. I can send pictures of my work, if you’d like to see that.
Thanks,
Scott
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Good Keyboards and getting them is a major problem. I can find none in the US where I am. They are so rare organ builders will not sell a la carte, and so was getting the Fatar wood keys put together with pistons by MidiWorks in Canada. They are expensive; two with one with pistons and shipping is like $4k. The M-Audio Key Station 61 is a cheap and good alternative but I doubt an authentic “organ” feel and they are not fixable if any keys go bad.
I’m starting work on it today so I’ll let you know if the internal junction board I have works or not.
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Hi Scott Weaver!
So glad to “see” you again! And so glad my blog was able to help in some small way!! Really makes me feel happy haha.
Angelina
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Also, what keyboards will you be using with pistons? I’m still looking for acceptable keyboards. I have one on order from Amazon, but it definitely doesn’t have pistons. It’ll be good enough to get started, but someday I want pistons.
Thanks,
Scott
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Hello there!!
So glad that my blog is actually helping people haha.
I started out with my v1 as what I would call it now, /&5$ an “old” Yamaha 88 weighted keyboard I had that’s midi capable.
V2 i was fortunate enough to find someone who was willing to sell me their “old” Fatar keyboards at a slightly steep discount. They have similar key actions as “real” pipe organs, tho I heard that a number of organ builders also use their keyboards.
You can also check out midi works in Canada. They make MIDI (obviously) organ keyboards, some with and some without matching key cheeks, and some with and some without pistons.
Let me know if you need further assistance! I would love to help out in any way I can!
Best of luck!
Angelina
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Also, regarding your comment about “the blade across four wires”, I’m fortunate to have 8 wires. So, I’m hoping I can get a connection from input to output with that many wires. I’ve used emory paper to rub off all the oxidation, and then I plan to solder a wire across the four posts for the inputs and another wire across the four posts for the outputs on the contact blocks. Surely I’ll get a connection between an input and output wire in this situation. Fingers crossed 🙂
Thanks,
Scott
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Hi Angilena. Happy New Year! I’m just reporting back that my Hauptwerk organ is now operational as of Dec 31, 2016! Many thanks to you for putting together this blog with all the helpful information in it. It answered so many questions that I had about rewiring my old pedalboard. I still have many improvements to make to the organ, but at least it is operational, so I can now practice at home.
Thanks again,
Scott
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