Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: Yamaha CS80

Hi. I'm new here. I just acquired a CS-80 that originally belonged to Oscar Peterson, who sold it when he put together a Synclavier system. The guy I bought it from has played on records for Bon Jovi, Aerosmith, the Cult, Scorpions, etc. He had the CS-80 for 16 years, keeping it in the studio and storage, and never once had it tuned. I'm amazed, because the tuning sounds great. There is one dead (or barely audible) voice on Ch. I, but everything else seems in working order, and it sounds great. This is the first CS-80 I've ever played and I'm having fun exploring is sonic and expressive possibilities. I'm planning on having a synth tech a few hours away in Seattle work on the dead voice and tune it, and I'm looking at having the Kenton MIDI installed (though I don't know how I feel about drilling into the beautiful front panel to install switches-- we'll see).

I also own an Arp 2600, the internals of which I had overhauled by an Arp specialist (Cirocco). When I go it, the Arp's enclosure was so water damaged and the hinges & corners so rusted that I had to have a new enclosure made for it. Fortunately I have a woodworking friend who replicated the original enclosure out of plywood and I tolexed it (using the old tolex as a pattern), and put on the corner/hinges/handle hardware, hand-setting every rivet. That was a huge, weeks-long project, but I learned a lot about tolex, rivets, hard-to-find case hardware, and people that shamelessly lie to you on eBay about what they're selling you. In the end, I have the most mint (if not original) cases for an Arp 2600 in existence. If only it could hold it's tuning as well as the CS-80…

So, back to the CS-80: I'm somewhat concerned. With all of the reading I've done here and on the net about replacing parts, etc., I feel like I'm sitting on a time bomb. Is my CS-80 going to just stop working one day? I understand that there are aging components, but I don't know what I need to do right now for a unit that seems to be functioning well. It seems that I should have the power supply refurbished (Circuit Solutions kit) based on what others have written, but what about the other stuff? Should I wait until something breaks before I have it fixed? Or is there potential for worse damage if I don't do something now? I want to do what's best, yet avoid overkill.

I'm glad to be here. Thanks for letting me share.

Doug