Rhodes Chroma Polaris

i've owned three of these buggers. i've had to repair them all.

the repair i finally ended up doing for the membrane switch of death  
thing was to trim the flexible leads back a little just behind the  
(invariable) crack. once that was done, there wasn't enough length to  
fit back into the socket side, so the solution was to remove the  
socket and use wires to bring the socket to the flexible lead. so i  
have little four inch or so wires connecting the socket to it's old  
location and making it so that i could move it right to the flexible  
leads that had cracked breaking some of the traces. before i did this  
i tried to fix the flexible leads but found it extremely difficult to  
work with. so instead, just cutting it straight across neatly behind  
the crack, cleaning it up so that it could make good electrical  
contact with the socket, and then extending the socket to reach the  
new shorter flexible lead. it worked perfectly, and all the switches  
on my chroma polaris have been working for quite some time now.  
excellent. plus, now that flexible lead isn't twisted around anymore  
so it is not likely to crack again.

on a side note, my chroma polaris is apparently a version two. it  
says chroma polaris II on the back. the two other i owned hadn't said  
anything about being version II. i have no idea what the difference is.

lastly, a long time ago i purchased a data cassette with third party  
sounds for the chroma polaris that i was never able to load in for  
some reason despite my best efforts. heck, it was pretty tough just  
getting the factory sounds to load in. anyhow, i'll try taking  
another shot at loading these sounds in to see what happens. perhaps  
i can get it turned in to a wave file and share here. the guy i got  
them from stopped selling them years and years ago, so i don't think  
there would be legal issues anymore.

cheers,

Paul Kavicky
Paper Street Audio Company
www.paperstreetaudio.com