Emu XL-7 & MP-7 User's Group

--- In xl7@yahoogroups.com, "retroillumination" <r
>
> Sent the unit to a specialized synth repair place in the UK who were > very confident of a reasonably fast fix. Unfortunately, after a month > they still hadn't reached a firm conclusion of what the problem was 
> so I got the unit back and sent it to a PSU repair specialist, 
> Lazaros of Olympus Electronics in Wirral, UK. Lazaros promptly 
> identified a problem with one of the large metal film resistors and 
> other components. He quoted less than £50 for the fix, including the 
> postage back to me. Their website and info is below:

Great to hear someone has gone down this route succesfully! The type of switchmode power supplies used in the XL-7 are not rocket science and as you say the same technology is used in every PC - or indeed any piece of mains powered electronics these days. Normally it is not worth repairing them which is why people go for replacements 99% of the time, and hence knowledge about repairing them is scarce. £50 is probably what you would have had to pay for a new one anyway (if you could find it).

Another alternative is to find a compatible power supply, but I think people who have tried that have found that it is not easy to find something that matches well enough, plus it will most likely need modification of the XL-7 in order to mount it, plus new cabling ... a bit of a hassle at best.

As to why the power supplies fail, well, some of the components in there are under a lot of stress, and at the same time being a commodity item the only way to be competitive is to lower the price, resulting in some components having marginal specifications.

Great to hear it's working again anyway!