"Roger Long" wrote in
:

Too bad. The ideas of a switch hermetically sealed from any moisture
is conceptually attractive but I'm not sure thay belong on boats in
critical applications any more.



Other than it all being a cheap piece of boat crap, that aside, reed
switches have, after being left on (magnetized) for a time, the
perpensity to become magnetic, themselves. The reeds are not supposed to
be magnetized, but they get that way. Once this happens, they become
either always on by their own magnetism, or so sensitive any magnetic
field stronger than the background earth magnetism will switch them on,
rendering them pretty much useless.

The other problem is the glass case. You wouldn't think it could bend,
being brittle glass, but it can! It only has to flex a tiny bit to make
the reeds touch "on" again. Sometimes the heat on one side of the glass
is more than the other and it'll bend them on without breaking them.

I've made a fairly good living on reed switches because Hammond Organ
used reeds actuated with pieces of refridgerator magnet rubber for pedal
switches for years. All this information comes from observing this
design defect and replacing reeds soldered into a really flimsy, cheap
circuit board wrapped in a curve around wood screwed down with sheet
metal screws as cheaply as possible. Hammond would have never used them.
Electromusic in Chicago has no scruples to cheapness under the Hammond
name. They made them this way.

Well, I just had a panic call from a pudgy little Phillipino girl who
plays the organ at her church. When they turned the organ off last
night, it stayed on and smoke came rolling out from behind the power
switch. The power switch has a paper bypass capacitor to keep it from
making a pop in the audio amp and I suspect it shorted and all the organ
current went through its short causing a little fire. I got an old
Hammond to fix at 1 then I'll meet her after work at 6 to have a look...
It's gonna be a profitable afternoon! SEND MORE THUNDER STORMS!!

Larry
--
Democrats are raising taxes on oil companies by $16,000,000,000.
Oil companies don't pay taxes, just like every other company.
Consumers pay all taxes, corporate and individual.
What's the price of a gallon of regular going to go to to pay $16B more?