Vintage Synth Repair

It's possible to buy new EL foils for example here, I have good
experience with their products:

www.backlight4you.com

They offer also inverters for the case also old inverter is dead.

Another possibility is to use modern display with LED backlight and do
small modifications - add limiting resistor, omit the inverter...

It's possible - most of instruments with displays follow standards
like T6963 for bigger graphical displays or HD44780 for character
displays.

I did such exchange in more of my older gear.

The only problem can be space  - LED backlighted displays are thicker
and not fit into some instruments. Then only new EL foil is the
solution. Hopefully one day thin displays will come to market, maybe
OLED type...

Daniel Forro


On 12 Apr, 2014, at 10:57 PM, John Rose wrote:

> I know this is not directly related but may give some other scope
> for thought.
> I am currently looking at replacing the EL backlights with LED based
> ones, the problem is that getting hold of the right size can be
> difficult so I am working on the idea of using the diffuser panel
> out of old laptop screens that can easily be cut to the desired size
> and then attaching some dual high output LED’s that are designed for
> back illumination, the LED’s are available in a variety of colours
> and also have a much longer life expectancy than the foils as well
> as doing away with the high voltages associated with the inverters.
> At the moment I have an Akai 3000 which has a totally dead backlight
> so I will probably use this as a test project and will probably go
> for a red backlight as I think this will be quite pleasing to look at.

> Many thanks
> John Rose

> (www.astrodevelopments.com)