>/documents/Restorations/Vox_Jaguar: Vox Jaguar (V304): Heath Kit Vers. Released around 1966; the jaguar was a low budget version of Vox's Continental Combo Organ. People say it doesn't sound as good as the Continental. I say: "If you compare the two no, but if you want the perfect dirty germanium transistor combo organ, this is the only one to buy!" I came across this organ when I was about 18. I was with my good friend Christian. We were making our sat. routine of going to thrift stores and checking out the local pawnshops and music shops for deals. When I first saw this in one of my favorite gear shops (In Duluth) I walked right by it because it was sitting against some other things closed up in it's case. I ask my guy at the shop if he had any deals for me that week. He said he did! He walked me over to the dirty gray beast, opened it up and plugged it in for me. My eyes lit up when he plugged it in. told me the F keys didn't work and that it was mine for $20. I just about shat myself. It wasn't 2 secs before I had a $20 bill in my hand and we were walking it out the door. It sat in my basement shop at my parents' house for quite sometime. I then moved to St. Paul where I was finally able to open it up to see what was up with it. This was 5 years later by the way. With a little tinkering I found that the (F) oscillator board had a cold joint on one of the caps. I re-flowed some new solder and low and behold.... IT WORKED! Upon further exploring I soon began to realize that due to this being the "Heath kit" version it meant a lot of joints were going to be bad. It was also really really dirty and noisy! Pictures below show the organ in various states. When I was 18 I ripped the tolex off with out thinking about it. But it was nasty anyways... My plan is to re-tolex the organ body in my amplifier line color of "Emerald Green". And the top of the organ (originally orange) will be blonde. Because I started this project before I had plans of including it on my website, I will just start off where I left off. Current progress: I have the old power supply pulled out of the organ due to it being extremely old, not safe, and really noisy. I have built up a new supply with my friend's power supply board from his 1176 kit. Since the board was designed to put out a bi-polar variable supply voltage and the Jaguar runs off -15V I only had to populate the negative side of the board. Since the new supply isn't going to fit in the old "shield" (which was the rear panel), I had to machine a new plate from aluminum stock. A bonus is I'm using a power transformer that has taps for 110V and 220V. And the Power Entry module I chose to use has a built in voltage selector and fuse holder. (See pictures below). Once I have the supply and plate installed, I have to build and route a new ground system. Post that, comes re-working cold and band joints, cleaning all contacts and replace all electrolytic capacitors (since we all know that any elec. cap over the age of 15-20 years probably needs to be replaces).
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