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

[Steve Begin]

How did you go about splicing a stranded ribbon to a membrane ribbon?

-Steve


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Glen" <mclilith at charter.net>
To: "Doug Terrebonne" <dougt55 at yahoo.com>; <synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl>
Sent: Monday, September 20, 2004 10:44 PM
Subject: Re: [sdiy] anybody ever managed to fix a chroma polaris with dead 
buttons?


> 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