hey folks
just received a 'for parts/not working' ex800 from ebay yesterday. LED lit up but made no sound. after a couple of hours of head scratching, RTFM, MIDI channel fiddling and loading the preset patches via .wav, it works! hot damn! preset 65 is like a hug!
i figure the battery needs replacing and have bought a CR2032 and clip-in holder to that end. not sure if it can be done without soldering by salvaging the existing contacts but if needs be i will solder it.
couple of issues i wanted to check about:
- all the buttons are sticky ranging from useable to not working at all. many thanks to this group i have found the cleaning guide and will try that tonight. the two sequencer buttons are outright missing, cleanly de-soldered from the board. previous owner had started cleaning them years ago and they are long gone.
i've seen that syntaur is selling replacements, here: https://syntaur.com/Items/5232.html
was wondering if anyone had tried these, or knew of any substitutes? looking around on aliexpress.com there are a whole lot of push button tactile switches which could work but just getting the right height and horizontal measurements would be an issue. another thing i was considering was rebuilding that entire PCB from scratch on a bit of custom perspex or similar, allowing for height adjustment, and 3D printing caps. seems like a lot of work but would be fun.
- secondly, the sound is all good but there is a 'white noise' under each attack, minor and warm but noticeable. my experience with old synths is minimal, so i didn't know if this was just normal or a sign of a sad capacitor somewhere. assuming it's standard but thought to check.
many thanks for any help!