[sdiy] Repairability of modern analog synths

[Roman Sowa]

I can spot iPhone repair shops almost every corner here. True, they 
mostly do screens, battery, case, and if anytnhing more complex than 
reflow of bad soldered BGA chip, they probably replace entire PCB. 
Although the word "entire" doens't sound right in case of such a small 
thingy.

The "right to repair" will not make a difference IMHO. It's the user who 
decides to buy new gadget, and it's not always because there's anything 
wrong with new one. And even if it is broken, it may cost as much as new 
one to fix it because the fixer also has to earn for a living, and it's 
not a walki in the park - doing any kind of business today is most of 
all a fight to comply with all regulations EU and domestic government 
has came up during last decades, with new one coming every year.
In the old days there were a lot of cheap repair shops not because the 
repair of big bulky THT radios was easy, but because there was no new 
equipment to buy, or it was very expensive. And it wasn't made with best 
components available so it easily broke from time to time. So a lot of 
needs to fix stuff from customers lead to big number of repairmen and 
low prices for their service. Why do I rant on economics now?

Roman


W dniu 2020-10-21 o 05:47, Benjamin Tremblay via Synth-diy pisze:
> At the very same time we are hearing the arguments for the “Right To 
> Repair” we are coming to terms with ultra-miniaturized products that 
> are entirely solid-state.
> There’s nothing to fix in your iPhone, nor most gadgets.
>
> Last month I was able to take a Sequential Six Trak out of the attic 
> and remove the hand-made mods, blow out the interior, solder back the 
> noise generator, and sell it for a decent price.
> As sad as I was to see it go, it was lovely being able to service this 
> thing after all these years.  A lot of people are buying these and 
> don’t understand how they worked, for example they don’t know you can 
> re-zero the wheels.
> I would love to see another synth like the Six Trak: Multi-timbral, 
> six voices, analog signal path. The only thing wrong with the Six Trak 
> was the 1MHz CPU that just couldn’t keep up. Take some of those AS3394 
> chips, get some muxes and a nice fast Teensy MCU, someone could put 
> multitimbral analog back on the map.  But it would be better do an 
> open-source hardware project than have Behringer make one eighteen 
> inches long and three pounds.
>
> The quest for authenticity takes us to absurd places.
>
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