Monday, August 1, 2011

Korg Polysix Repairs

Tonight ive decided its high time that I start on the pile of synths that I have that are in need of repair. In the past couple of years I have amassed quite a collection of vintage gear, and it is now becoming apparent that I need to keep up with the repairs or I'll never have them all fully working.

While I was in between places to live I bought a broken Polysix, it has the typical battery leak damage to the KLM-367A board. The synth came with a bag of parts that should be sufficient to fix it, or so I was told. After pulling the board out, cleaning up the damaged area and inspecting ive determined ill still need a couple more parts. (IC31 socket, R17 resistor array and some thin wire for trace repair)

Here is its current condition:
Ill try to post progress updates and pictures as I go, for now ive got to track down a couple parts.












Edit (8/6/11) - I worked for the better part of this evening on the PCB and it gave me a pretty difficult time. Clearing the old through holes without damaging what was left of the solder pads was just about impossible. This resulted in the replacement IC31 pins not making good contact with the traces below. I went through and wired up all the traces from IC31 underneath the board because of this but after completing my work I still have faults. Ive decided to purchase a remade blank PCB from this site: https://sites.google.com/site/jedjorgensen/klm367a

Once the new PCB and replacement parts come in I will try repairing this thing again, until then onto the next synth.

Gear that needs repair

Realizing that my aging fleet of analog synths mostly all need work, I figured id put together a list to help keep track. All these repairs seemed minor enough at the time of discovery to let them slide for the time being. Now ive fallen behind on repairs and figure its time to start fixing all of them that I can. First on the workbench will be the Korg PolySix, which ill be making a separate post for.

The List

Roland:
  • Jupiter 6: voice 6 VCF, env 2 kbd track slider
  • Juno 6: PWM adjustment inop.
  • Juno 60: 2 memory position switches
  • Juno 106: voice 2 VCF, all coatings removed
  • TR-606: battery power inop/door missing
  • MC-505: screen loose
  • JX-8p: aftertouch (custom rackmount?)
  • SH-101: pitch bend/mod wheel loose
  • SH-09: pitch/vcf bend/mod sliders

Korg:
  • MonoPoly: voice 4 tracking
  • PolySix: battery damage
  • Poly800: battery dead

Moog:
  • Micromoog: recap/calibrate

Yamaha:
  • CS15: clean/calibrate

Studio Electronics:
  • SE-1: MIDI wonky?