Yamaha CS80

Hello

I'd like to introduce myself. My name ist Florian Anwander. I live in
Munich, Germany, and I am doing synth repair as side job. I work most
times on Roland gear, but I did two restorations of CS-60, some repair
on a CS-50 and now I have to tune and repair a CS-80.

As first offer to the list, I'd like to share a simple helper trick I
introduced to the CS-60s. I add a LED, that shows the active voice.
http://fa.utfs.org/diy/yamaha_cs60/index.html
This makes the tuning much easier.

I will have a question regarding the CS-80 preset selection too, but I
will do that in another mail.

best regards
Florian

Hi Florian and welcome to the group!

That's a great and simple mod! I always turn the power off and on when
tuning to reset the voice count. It's certainly worth to spend an hour
to do this mod. I about to tune my CS80 now, so that was good timing!

Best,

Fredrik Segerfalk

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Florian Anwander skrev 2013-11-22 12:52:

> Hello
>
> I'd like to introduce myself. My name ist Florian Anwander. I live in
> Munich, Germany, and I am doing synth repair as side job. I work most
> times on Roland gear, but I did two restorations of CS-60, some repair
> on a CS-50 and now I have to tune and repair a CS-80.
>
> As first offer to the list, I'd like to share a simple helper trick I
> introduced to the CS-60s. I add a LED, that shows the active voice.
> http://fa.utfs.org/diy/yamaha_cs60/index.html
> This makes the tuning much easier.
>
> I will have a question regarding the CS-80 preset selection too, but I
> will do that in another mail.
>
> best regards
> Florian
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo Groups Links
>
>
>

Hello Frederik

thanks for the welcome!

> to do this mod. I about to tune my CS80 now, so that was good timing!

Do you tune with a frequency counter or with a chromatic tuner?

Until now I had no frequency counter, so I used a guitar tuner with an
analogue meter (Boss TU-12). I first adjusted the octave scaling only
until the needle doesn't jump and I did not care for the absolute
tuning. After that I set the absolute tuning.
This is a very fast method with a "normal" analogue synth, but with the
polyphonic CS series lacking an unisono mode it is a bit annoying.

I now have a multimeter, which can do frequency measurements too, so
I'll try it this time with the "official" method from the service manual.

On the other hand, I have already thought about establishing a kind of
unisono mode, but that is too much effort for now...


Florian

Hi all.

I don’t think frequency counters are useful at all for tuning. You can do it all - and very quickly - just using a reference tone and beating tuning by ear or strobe tuner or Lissajous Patterns (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6nGiBzGLD8). I just use ClearTune on my iPhone to play a sine wave at the highest pitch C and then do the first tuning step to match. Once you’re close, it’s very simple to tune it in perfect by beating. I even posted some sine-wave mp3 files here a few years ago - http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/yamahacs80/files/Tuning%20tones

Once I’ve done some tuning step for Channel I, move the balance to hear both channels and adjust the same trimmer for the matching Channel II card.

The only trick is to keep the electronics warm. Unless you’re in my SoCal garage in the afternoon, the room temp is probably lower than the insides of a CS80. Just warm it up for a while and prop the lid up just enough to get to the trimmers and close it in between steps to get it warm again. I used to lift up the card rack until I realized a few years ago that Yamaha put the trimmers at the top end of the cards so you can get to them without lifting up the cage. d-oh! Just be careful to bend the wire bundles up out of the way.

David

Hello David

On 24.11.13 20:54 , David Rogoff wrote:
> The only trick is to keep the electronics warm.
I did not have temperature related problems with the CS60s, but I can
imagine, that the 80s really need the temperature. I already thougt
about to tune it while I direct a fan heater from some distance to it.

Florian

I've had stability issues with 60s and 80s relating to heat.