The Yamaha AN1x Synthesizer mailing list

spaceanimals a \ufffdcrit :

>Had one. Had the best Pulse Width Modulation, the synth sounded warm 
>and lush and never ever ran right for more than fifteen minutes. 
>Massive crashes constantly and then alas one day she crashed and never 
>recovered.
>
>Jimmy
>  
>
Hello Jimmy !
I've heard things like that... a very interesting instrument but not 
very reliable. As a lot of these old days synths...
As far as i know some worked perfectly, others were always in the repair 
shop. The manufacturing quality was surely worst than the design itself.
On my opinion yours was affected by power supply failures caused by an 
excess of heat (too small heatsinks or excessive current) leading to 
some regulator IC emergency shutdown, and the \ufffdP crash. Let it cool 
down: you can restart until the next crash and so on, until you turn it 
off definitely. The last and final stop was probably the death of some 
inexpensive supply part. Nothing really serious, but boring....
With these old machines it was better (if not imperative) to have some 
basic-or more- electronics knowledge, unless you wanted to spend a lot 
of money in maintenance and upgrades. It's always obviously true for 
vintage gear collectors.OK, you want only to store the collection in 
some show room and never play a note? If not, buy quickly a DMM, an 
oscilloscope, a good soldering iron and learn how, where and when to use 
this equipment!
That's one reason (the other being the price) of the overwhelming 
success of the 80s digital japanese synths: more voices, cheaper, and 
far more reliable than the analog "dinosaurs".
Cheers
J.F.