liquid-crystal displays do not give off any light of their own. in the dark, they are unreadable. most have a thin electroluminescent panel behind the glass display that provides a (usually) blue-green 'night light' to make them readable in dim light conditions. the EL panel has a definite life-span...

at my age, the bedroom is for sleeping (lol)

but i carry around an old Yamaha PSS-480

has 5 melody memories, MIDI in and out, stereo speakers, reverb, even a tiny 2-op FM synth voice.

got it at a flea market for $15 it's 27 x 11 inches

this project is NOT finished, but it plays even though its guts are spread out over the bench: Casio CZ-1. lightning strike? static? realy bad day at factory? bought dead. that's D.E.A.D. replaced BOTH CPUs, 9 op-amps, BA-something VCA, backlight and inverter, replaced every cap and semiconductor in...

hello. my name is Rhino... I am a synthaholic. I tried to get help after that nasty Ebay incident, but then I met Craig and his damned list....... one synth at a time used to satisfy me for a while, but now... I buy broken synths in pairs, fix them both but only sell one: I hide the other in the bas...

with no schematic handy, i'm basing this on the AX-80.... there are several 4000 series CosMos ICs that decode the digital signal from the CPU and convert it to six analog signals - one for each voice. if one of these that feed the VCF cutoff or the VCA gain has failed that may do it. set up a patch...

found this: also, check your connections to the board again...be shure you did not get the + line solders on the wrong trace. sounds like something is draining the battery.

looking at the schematic, i think there might be a problem with the connection from the battery to the board. the voltage from the battery is not getting to the RAM, and the battery display is reading the voltage from the power supply to the RAM - not the actual cell voltage. (edited to correct stup...

a guess:
do you have the Angel City upgrade? if so IIRC it has it's OWN battery....which may be dead.

Welcome to our mad little hangout!

two come to mind:

Korg DW-6000

Ensoniq ESQ-1

while not actualy a synth, the old Mirage could crank out some filth with a little programming.

others have posted about "synthesizing any sound" and "pulling off any popular synth 'hook'"....

what about:

does: on every synth they own, create at least one truly original, useful patch and share it with others.

does: do his/her homework and research BEFORE buying a synth.

does not: buy a $2500 board to play three chord clav lines.

does: knows when to draw the line and take his equipment to a professional repair tech rather than bollix it up himself.

the MS20 is somewhat valuable today. you might give some thought to having the case and panel re-done by http://www.customsynth.co.uk/

it will not be cheap, but you will have a restored classic synthesizer for another 30 years.

try
www.vintageplanet.nl

my 2-cents failing by-pass caps. the oscillators are running all the time: the audio leaks into the power busses and into the output amps. most all VCAs have a pot to trim the 'zero' balance: drift occurs and the osc signal leaks thru, even if the actual VCA circut is ok. Bross has another good poin...

the Ensoniq EPS-16+ is a good ol' board, but a better choice would be the ASR-10