My gear repairs, refurbs, and mods

[twonabomber]

Been working on some of my gear. Most of the stuff in my collection is from the late 80's through mid 90's and some of it has started to show some issues and I bought a couple pieces that already had issues.

Started with my Roland S-50 sampler. Bought it in '91 and it was my main board for a long time. I like the action and it's got velocity and aftertouch. It was Roland's flagship sampler until the W-30 workstation came out.

These boards have a relay in them on the output circuit board. The relay contacts get dirty after periods of sitting unused...and this board sat in a case on a shelf for a couple years. Dirty relays result in crackly sound, or no sound. The relays seem to be made of unobtainium, if you do find one it's probably cheaper to buy an output board off a sampler someone is parting out.



And here's the relay removed from the circuit board



I didn't try to clean it yet, instead I hard wired the contact points, taking the relay out of the equation.



So far, so good. Except some of the switches were getting to where they didn't work. I've found teeny switches on synth parts sites for $5 each, or 100 on eBay straight from China for $5. Hmmm. I needed 26 switches, so the 100 pack it is.



All those little square fuckers had to be de-soldered. Four contacts each. Then the pads cleaned up, and re-soldered. Can't go too hot with the iron either or you'll pull the pads off the circuit board, so it was a three or four beer job.



I was going to replace a couple of the red LED's with blue but I'm starting to think the blue LED is getting to be overdone.

[twonabomber]

The S-50 runs on 3.5" floppy discs. The OS is loaded with the sample info, simply powering up the board gives a "insert disc" message. Can't even be used as a controller without the OS loaded. Having a pile of floppies around is getting to be a pain in the ass, so I took the original drive out and installed an HxC floppy emulator.

Original drive. Same form factor as a regular floppy but it's wired differently. Shugart or something. The HxC automatically senses the correct type, I made no changes to the jumpers.



The HxC



Didn't get a pic of the drive enclosure open, but here it is installed



The floppy emulator runs on an SD card. So my whole library of samples can be converted on the PC, transferred to the SD card, and read on the sampler. Sample files can also be backed up on the PC or a CD or whatever. The two outer buttons scroll up and down through the list of disc images, and the center loads. The load time is not any faster, it still takes about a minute to load a full disc. The big advantage is not needing the old fragile floppies.

More on the HxC http://hxc2001.free.fr/floppy_drive_emulator/ . Ships from Poland, mine took about two weeks to get here at the beginning of December.

[twonabomber]

The S-50 has video output, either old school RGB or a black and white signal. I used to use an old B&W security monitor with it but trashed that a long time ago.



I would have modded the board to have modern VGA or color output but the Texas Instruments VDP only allowed for RGB or B&W. So conversion has to happen outside. Enter a converter box sourced on Amazon and a Roland to SCART cable found on eBay. The sampler has a 13 pin cable and it's a bitch to make one. They originally were compatible with Atari or Amiga CGA monitors, and I have an Atari monitor but didn't want to use it on this setup.





And boom! Color output on a modern monitor. HDMI out of the box to an HDMI to DVI cable into my old Samsung 24" monitor, mounted to an Ultimate Support Deltex stand with a $10 LCD wall mount. The monitor also has a VGA input so I can run a cable to my computer and use it for that, and switch between the two from the front panel of the monitor. Now I have to remember how to use the sampler...





So what's next? The Roland JX-8P that sits under the sampler has a dead keybed and the pitch bend lever is broken. I found a used bender on eBay and instructions how to repair the keybed. Should just need some cleaning and that one key needs re-seated. The JX was kind of beat up and there are plenty nicer ones out there but I got a good deal on it and I'll keep it. The JX-8P was one of the last truly analog synths Roland made and it has a great sound.

[twonabomber]

Around the time the HxC came in I picked up this Casio CZ-1 at a local shop for $300.



I had been watching a few on eBay and I would have paid more than $300 after shipping. This one's not beat up and I could try it out instead of gambling on an eBay one working, or worse, UPS destroying it. I still have a Casio CZ-230s that I bought when I was in high school, the CZ-1 was the flagship and has the same sounds the smaller board does but it adds more voices, full size keys, velocity and aftertouch, and also stereo chorus. Guy at the shop says he doesn't know much about keys but that it had to be turned on a certain way. Got it powered up and it's slow to make sound and then it drifts in and out for the first few minutes. They wanted more than $300 but I said if I had to open it up and clean it I'd need a better price on it, and I knew it had been in the shop since September when I was in there to buy strings so I was hoping they were ready to deal. They agreed on $300 and I did pretty good because it came with a case AND a memory cartridge. Can maybe flip the cart for $100.

So I get it home and hooked up to my system and do a quick Google on the power up issue. The CZ has a battery in it and if the battery is dead the board needs initialized every time it's powered up. Problem found, dead battery. I found battery holders on Amazon for a couple bucks and the proper battery elsewhere 3 for $5. I'll fix my CZ and put a couple battery and holder combos on eBay or something.

I may tear into the CZ first, I think it'll be a quicker repair over the JX. The JX works fine over MIDI though so even if I don't fix the keybed I can still fire it off with a controller or sequence.

[vandeleur]

Can I be first to say I s******ed at you finding a used bender

[twonabomber]

I was on a new bender when I typed that

[twonabomber]

Was down by my old house today. Hit Amish country for lunch, then went over to one of the better pawn shops in the county. Found a Korg Wavestation SR rack for $70. Powered up and says low battery...



Another quick Google shows it's a CR2032 battery, and I just happen to have one in my parts bin. Eleven screws, pop the lid and ten minutes later it's in the rack. Took another few minutes to load the factory sounds back into RAM via MIDI and we're back in business.



I will probably flip this one though, I have the VST version of the Wavestation and the sounds are all the same.

They also had a Kawai K1 rack module but the screen was dead. I haven't found any instructions how to replace one, or even the display, so I passed.

[twonabomber]

Playing with some new toys...

[twonabomber]

Hole filler

[Kristy]

I'll wait for the title of Turdonabummer's book: 'Born In Poverty: The Story of the Second-Rate/White Trash Gear of a Failed Musician Living in Cleveland'

[twonabomber]

I prefer "never was." I've played out exactly once. It's a well funded hobby.

[twonabomber]

Oh yes, I did.



Found on eBay, in Dayton, at a great price. Super clean. And it's got the Skyscraper patch!



Now I'm done. My collection is complete.

For today.

Maybe.

[Seshmeister]

Found on eBay, in Dayton, at a great price. Super clean. And it's got the Skyscraper patch!

Good synth in the olden times.

Got to use one owned by the studio on a demo and was kind of shocked that Tuggle had just used a preset for the start of Skyscraper.

In those days a D50 wasn't long out and was an unthinkable price of $2500 so I of course immediately used it for the intro to a song too doubling down on tacky.

To be fair I was very very young...

[twonabomber]

This one was under $500, including shipping. I see them for $600 and up all the time and didn't want to pay that much. Bottom has some light scratches but all mine are nicked up from stands or whatever. Panel is pretty clean. They had tape on some of the keys and I figured I'd be wiping them down with Goo Gone but the tape peeled right off.

Found it on eBay Friday night while at work, but I've forgotten my eBay password and figured it would still be available when I got home at 6 am. Then I forgot to buy it...slept on it Saturday, and looked it up again at 2 am or so. Hit BIN when I got home a couple hours later.

Supposedly Prince had one at Paisley. While scrolling through the patches I'd find one that sounded familiar and try something, found a horn patch that was pretty close to Sexy MF.

I had a D5 sitting in the same spot on the rack. I told my friend it'll probably end up at his house. I bought his daughter an Ibanez and a teeny Marshall for Christmas, she can learn keys now too.

[Seshmeister]

Apparently the Korg M1 killed it in the late 80s. I bought one a few years back again for silly money $175, and from memory I'm pretty sure the D50 presets are better apart from the piano which the Korg does well for the time.

I guess it depends what you are doing but rock was always about strings, horns and lush stuff. So eg. a DX7 was no use to me at all back then.