[sdiy] bit one

[greg montalbano]

Agreed -- as has been mentioned here before, the next step up in vintage 
synth maintenance is replacing sockets & connectors with machine-tooled, 
gold-types.
But that IS the next step up;  some folks don't want to go that far
(and then there are some folks won't accept anything less than re-chipping 
the entire board -- was just working on an Oberheim Two-Voice, and I'll 
testify that 30 year old CMOS just ain't that reliable).

Depends on what you're up for, how much you want to spend, and how much you 
care for your beast.

~GMM

At 11:50 AM 2/6/04 -0800, Scott wrote:
>Hi gang,
>
>I work in the customer service department for a test equipment 
>manufacturer, and
>the term "Gold Pin Mod" is ubiquitous to everything that was produced up 
>until a
>few years ago, when my department started forcing its hand.
>
>It has to do with tin connectors, particularly on but sometimes not 
>limited to,
>the power supplies.  Invariably, as time progressed, the equipment would 
>become
>unreliable, jumpy, -generally screwed up in other words - and the customer 
>would
>send it in.  Automatically, we'd replace the pins in the power supply 
>connectors
>with gold plated pins, and soon we just started doing it automatically to
>anything that was in warranty.  Worked like a charm in exactly 100% of the 
>cases.
>  Putting in tin connectors only bought a bit of time, and we are of the 
> philosphy
>that you don't clean anything - you replace (these are high dollar boxes 
>to begin
>with).  I finally moved up to 'core' development teams, and I *never* 
>would sign
>off on anything that didn't have gold plated connectors on the power supplies,
>BOM price be damned.
>
>Of course, these are service monitors that get a lot of field work in all 
>kinds
>of environments, but all the same - if I had a tasty vintage synth like 
>that, I'd
>raid Fort Knox and see if there wasn't some way to put in gold plated 
>connectors.
>  Just a thought......
>
>Cheers,