I actually feel like posting more than one item today. :)
These two videos are from a very cool client, Scott Metzger.
Here's a great demo of the 4 Voice my husband recently did for him.
If you like that, check out his cool Memorymoog Demo video. (I got to peek inside this beast not too long ago. Rudi does excellent work! :)
Showing posts with label restoration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label restoration. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Thursday, July 30, 2009
BUCHLA!!!!!
I get to play with this today... as well as the one in the background, hidden near where I put the "asb" mark.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Synthacon revisited
Some of you may recall that I posted a pic of a Synthacon that was here last March.
Here it is post-restoration:
Here it is post-restoration:
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Another System 700 video. :)
This time I'm hosting it on my server, 'cause I got the wrong kind of attention when I posted the last video on YouTube.
Again, I'm not a synthesist nor a musician... just havin' a little fun with something I had a hand in restoring. :)
Again, I'm not a synthesist nor a musician... just havin' a little fun with something I had a hand in restoring. :)
Monday, March 23, 2009
When restoring a Minimoog...
"Drill, baby, drill!" is NOT a phrase to keep in mind!
Y'see, you're most likely going to leave tiny bits of metal in the pots when you drill them. That's a disaster waiting to happen!
Y'see, you're most likely going to leave tiny bits of metal in the pots when you drill them. That's a disaster waiting to happen!
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
If you're gonna change caps...
... do yourself and the synth a favor and put the value of the cap face up, and make sure the lead isn't smushed up against the positive side of the cap. That way you look like you know what you're doing. ;-)
Changed some resistors today, too. That always takes me back to my early days with Synthfool, when I helped assemble Polyfusion modules. :)
Changed some resistors today, too. That always takes me back to my early days with Synthfool, when I helped assemble Polyfusion modules. :)
Friday, February 27, 2009
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Work pics
I put a few pics on my Facebook account of what I've been doing lately. (Check the labels of this post for hints!)
Monday, January 19, 2009
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Been doin' the assistant thing lately...
My kitchen table has been my workbench lately. It's perfect for replacing caps on circuit boards and working on keyboard actions. Over New Year's we used said table to assemble the last of the Taurus 1 replacement boards. Lotsa stripping and crimping on my part. :)
I used solder wick for the first time in ages earlier this week. Reminded me of a dozen years ago when I was first learning this stuff. :) I used the power de-solderer today and burned my finger when my hand slipped. Ow!
Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd do this kind of work *and* enjoy it, but it beats a whole lot of other jobs I've had! ;-)
I used solder wick for the first time in ages earlier this week. Reminded me of a dozen years ago when I was first learning this stuff. :) I used the power de-solderer today and burned my finger when my hand slipped. Ow!
Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd do this kind of work *and* enjoy it, but it beats a whole lot of other jobs I've had! ;-)
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Always double check your work...
My better half discovered that a Buchla 192 module he's restoring had one wire on a jack that was never soldered. He took this pic with a very cool USB microscope we have. :)
Thought for the day:
While I have the knowledge and tools required to replace components on a circuit board, my limited experience means it requires a bit of effort to do correctly.
Thought for the day:
While I have the knowledge and tools required to replace components on a circuit board, my limited experience means it requires a bit of effort to do correctly.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Thoughts on Capacitors
For today's post, I'm turning over my blog to my husband, 'cause he knows more about this subject than I do.
I recently read a bunch of posts on AH about recapping.
After the laughs and tears subsided, I thought I'd write a few comments.
"I don't get this whole recapping thing"
Obviously you don't. Electrolytic caps have a wet paste in them like a battery.
Like a battery, they can lose their ability to hold a charge or can leak.
They can corrode their conductors from the inside out.
Much like a rusty pail of water, they can appear fine one day and leak the next.
It's well known and accepted that electrolytics do not perform as well over long lengths of time. To not seek that knowledge first before offering a dumb opinion, is itself quite dumb. I've never actually seen a person die from cancer, but thousands do every day.
Btw, how clean do you think that water remains in a rusty pail? ;-)
"You can test the cap in the circuit."
Wrong. Most old caps will read just fine if tested in a circuit or out.
This is because most people are checking them in a static way and are using a capacitance meter. However aged caps can change in how they react to high frequencies and can develop lower resistance than desired.
A cap may measure fine with a meter and fail horribly when actually in a circuit.
Even old polystyrene caps can work 90% fine, but then work poorly at high freqs.
Their "dissipation factor" may not be as good as new and this can affect *just* high freq tracking.
"Replace the tantalums"
On Arps, I wholly recommend this.
But on many other synths, failures just haven't been observed as often.
I've had to replace only one tantalum in Moogs in 15 years.
Replace them if you like, but remember that tants have even more specs to adhere to than electrolytics and they're very expensive.
"Anybody that can solder can replace caps."
What an ignorant statement.
Quite like "anyone that can cut flesh can do surgery."
It's always what someone doesn't know that bites them.
I've seen people replace caps on some synths (Sonic six for example) and not know the holes are not plated through and thus the component required soldering on both sides of the boards.
I've seen people install caps in synths where the leads were left so long, the caps shorted out upon shipping.
I've seen caps installed backwards.
I've even seen full recapping jobs done correctly, but where the synth died because the "tech" screwed up on assembling it correctly afterwards.
"Discharge the caps!"
How ridiculous!
Low voltage caps in low impedance circuits don't need to be discharged.
What little voltage they have will be quickly drained.
Besides not having any voltage left in them about 5 seconds after being powered down, the most they'd have is 20-30 volts on them anyways.
Discharging caps is necessary when working on high voltage devices such as video monitors and TVs. It is not necessary in synths.
A cap in a synth won't kill you. A cap in video monitor with 50KV, might.
"How do we learn if we can't try?"
Try all you want. That's how I learned.
But very few amatuer techs write a followup post how they screwed up their instruments afterwards, so the thought left to many people is that the job is easy.
The fact is, you cannot just decide to do something right. You must practice.
Dentistry, law, medicine, martial arts.. they all look easy from the outside.
But only an idiot tries doing these jobs themselves unless they don't value the outcome.
Most home medical remedies don't work.
Most legal self-defenses fail in court.
Most DIY jobs I've received in are done poorly.
Most people who think they can fight get their butts kicked if the opponent is trained.
It should be mentioned that (imho) Tony at Oakley sound got it right and so did the guy who mentioned lifting traces despite good tools and experience.
I have 34 years of synth experience and still make mistakes now and then.
But the difference with people like Tony and I is that we know how to fix our own mistakes and don't cause as many to begin with.
I recently read a bunch of posts on AH about recapping.
After the laughs and tears subsided, I thought I'd write a few comments.
"I don't get this whole recapping thing"
Obviously you don't. Electrolytic caps have a wet paste in them like a battery.
Like a battery, they can lose their ability to hold a charge or can leak.
They can corrode their conductors from the inside out.
Much like a rusty pail of water, they can appear fine one day and leak the next.
It's well known and accepted that electrolytics do not perform as well over long lengths of time. To not seek that knowledge first before offering a dumb opinion, is itself quite dumb. I've never actually seen a person die from cancer, but thousands do every day.
Btw, how clean do you think that water remains in a rusty pail? ;-)
"You can test the cap in the circuit."
Wrong. Most old caps will read just fine if tested in a circuit or out.
This is because most people are checking them in a static way and are using a capacitance meter. However aged caps can change in how they react to high frequencies and can develop lower resistance than desired.
A cap may measure fine with a meter and fail horribly when actually in a circuit.
Even old polystyrene caps can work 90% fine, but then work poorly at high freqs.
Their "dissipation factor" may not be as good as new and this can affect *just* high freq tracking.
"Replace the tantalums"
On Arps, I wholly recommend this.
But on many other synths, failures just haven't been observed as often.
I've had to replace only one tantalum in Moogs in 15 years.
Replace them if you like, but remember that tants have even more specs to adhere to than electrolytics and they're very expensive.
"Anybody that can solder can replace caps."
What an ignorant statement.
Quite like "anyone that can cut flesh can do surgery."
It's always what someone doesn't know that bites them.
I've seen people replace caps on some synths (Sonic six for example) and not know the holes are not plated through and thus the component required soldering on both sides of the boards.
I've seen people install caps in synths where the leads were left so long, the caps shorted out upon shipping.
I've seen caps installed backwards.
I've even seen full recapping jobs done correctly, but where the synth died because the "tech" screwed up on assembling it correctly afterwards.
"Discharge the caps!"
How ridiculous!
Low voltage caps in low impedance circuits don't need to be discharged.
What little voltage they have will be quickly drained.
Besides not having any voltage left in them about 5 seconds after being powered down, the most they'd have is 20-30 volts on them anyways.
Discharging caps is necessary when working on high voltage devices such as video monitors and TVs. It is not necessary in synths.
A cap in a synth won't kill you. A cap in video monitor with 50KV, might.
"How do we learn if we can't try?"
Try all you want. That's how I learned.
But very few amatuer techs write a followup post how they screwed up their instruments afterwards, so the thought left to many people is that the job is easy.
The fact is, you cannot just decide to do something right. You must practice.
Dentistry, law, medicine, martial arts.. they all look easy from the outside.
But only an idiot tries doing these jobs themselves unless they don't value the outcome.
Most home medical remedies don't work.
Most legal self-defenses fail in court.
Most DIY jobs I've received in are done poorly.
Most people who think they can fight get their butts kicked if the opponent is trained.
It should be mentioned that (imho) Tony at Oakley sound got it right and so did the guy who mentioned lifting traces despite good tools and experience.
I have 34 years of synth experience and still make mistakes now and then.
But the difference with people like Tony and I is that we know how to fix our own mistakes and don't cause as many to begin with.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Workspace
Last week, I did my first cleaning/rebushing job on a Minimoog keyboard in many, many moons.
I decided to take a picture of how I like like to set my work space up when I do this.
I decided to take a picture of how I like like to set my work space up when I do this.
- Two trash bags spread out. One to keep the keybed on, and one to put the keys on while they're being cleaned
- Soft mallet to help remove stubborn keys from keybed
- Special tool for the springs
- Screwdriver for tightening key screws. (I actually used a 1/4, which is a size bigger than in this picture.)
- Old wire cutters for removing stubborn bushings
- Pliers, just in case
- iPod, for making work more enjoyable
- Cotton swabs, for various cleaning uses
- Glass cleaner, for cleaning the keytops
- Simple green, for cleaning the metal part of the keys
- Glass jar with lid for little dome thingies (I leave cleaning these up to my husband.)
- Bin to put springs in
- Old cotton t-shirt for cleaning keytops
Friday, May 23, 2008
Roland System 700 Testing
Video courtesy of my husband. Any prog rock fans should dig what happens 25 seconds in. :)
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Bathing an Ody board
This Ody board came from the white Ody below. We no longer employ this method of board washing, but I thought it was a neat pic--
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Color changing Minimoog
A Minimoog painted with a special color changing paint. The lit wheel has a color changing LED in it too. :)
This is one of those custom projects that was cool to watch. :)
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Thoughts on springs
Taking springs off of a keyboard action is no small feat. It requires a lot more hand control and precision than most people would think. If you don't put them on or take them off correctly, you risk a)sending the spring flying in some random direction and landing who knows where, b)stretching the coils the spring.
We'll skip over A for now, mainly because I've done that more times than I care to remember. ;-)
Stretching a spring's coils makes it useless, as there's no way to repair it. We have the means to replace these springs, and I've definitely replaced more springs than I've sent springs flying!
I'm not sure what the point to this post is... maybe I'm just rambling about keyboard springs 'cause some unknown person botched up nearly all the springs on a Mini (see previous post). I can only speculate that this person probably thought working on a keyboard action was easy.
We'll skip over A for now, mainly because I've done that more times than I care to remember. ;-)
Stretching a spring's coils makes it useless, as there's no way to repair it. We have the means to replace these springs, and I've definitely replaced more springs than I've sent springs flying!
I'm not sure what the point to this post is... maybe I'm just rambling about keyboard springs 'cause some unknown person botched up nearly all the springs on a Mini (see previous post). I can only speculate that this person probably thought working on a keyboard action was easy.
Bad spring, good spring...
All the springs that were removed from a Minimoog's action. I swear, the Mini in question was the victim of malpractice. :(
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