[sdiy] anybody ever managed to fix a chroma polaris with dead buttons?

[Glen]

At 04:18 PM 9/20/04 , Doug Terrebonne wrote:

>Sometimes you can do a much simpler fix if the ribbon cracks near the end.
This
>is what happened to my Polaris II. All I had to do to fix it was break off the
>end where it was cracked and stuff it back into the connector. I also taped up
>the end of the ribbon where it connects to help prevent future cracking.

In my experience, that isn't nearly as good as relocating the connector, as
I had previously explained in my lengthy post on the subject. Those ribbons
are under too much stress already. Making them shorter creates even more
stress, unless the connector is removed from the circuit board and extended
with ribbon cable (using the good stranded-wire style ribbon cable, not the
membrane-style crap.)

You can then let the membrane ribbon cable lay flat against the case of the
synth, with practically no stress on the membrane cable at all. This should
go a very long way toward fighting off future cracking and breakage. If you
don't relocate the connectors, you are simply adding a brief delay before
the next failure.

For the day when the actual membrane switches ever fail, I'm working on an
idea for bypassing them with tactile switches and good-quality ribbon
cable. I think I can do it without changing the external appearance of the
synth, which is my goal. 

However, I admit that I'm somewhat tempted to change all the LEDs to blue
LEDs. It should go well with all the blue control panel markings.   :)

Maybe I'll even spring for RGB style LEDs, so you can mix and pick your
color on a whim, or even revert back to the stock red color if you want.  :)


later,
Glen