Has anybody dampened their vintage keyboards with modeling clay?

[EscapeVelocity]

Car audio enthusiasts use clay to dampen the rattles of car doors and whatnot...so I was thinking that the same trick might help with keyboards. You could dampen the rattles somewhat and improve the thwock from a thwak on lightweight keyboards with the keys bottoming out.

What say  you? 

[rm-rf]

in my opinion... if its vintage, don't mod it.

[Melvang]

For me to dampen the ring and ping overtones in my PC-AT, I used a combination of rattle can plastidip, and paracord core strands in the springs as Oral B Super floss is not available in my area.  Plus the plates have been cut down, and it sits in my keyboard tray with no case. 

[fohat.digs]

Wasn't there a thread just like this a few month ago?

[SpAmRaY]

Wasn't there a thread just like this a few month ago?

This could be said of most threads lately

[Chromako]

Modelling Clay... nope. But it's not a bad idea. Reminds me of the Blue-Tack mod for headphones.


I used thin Dynamat- and on the Model F, it.... sorta works. It seems to dampen about, oh, 10-15% of the sound- yes, very unscientific measurements went into that number. The Superfloss mod does work very well, however, but you have to be careful and do it right or you end up with non-functional keys.

[fohat.digs]

The Superfloss mod does work very well, however, but you have to be careful and do it right or you end up with non-functional keys.

The floss cannot be longer than the spring or it will not seat properly.

The easy technique would be to insert the floss in the spring and snip it off at the top, but even with small sharp scissors that leaves an extra millimeter or so.

[Melvang]

While I don't use dental floss, I use core strands from paracord, I just insert the cord int the spring, back it out a blonde one, cut, and make sure it sits in fully.  I do get an occasional one that the cap doesn't want to seat right, but I get that with and without the mod. 

On F's my opinion is the vast majority of the rings and rings comes from the springs ratting from the vibrations of every keystroke.  So with the floss, it dampens the vibration just enough, lime putting your finger on a pluked guitar string, but not pressing down to the board/fret.

[CPTBadAss]

RavenII is also into car audio and posted his build log where he used sound dampening material called Dynamat to dampen this Nerd60. I thought that was a damn good idea so I don't see why testing out modeling clay would hurt.