Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! (Like Darth Vader)

[BlackGnosis]

*a little mood music

Ever have your all time life long buddy of a synthesizer all out die on you?

7 long wonder years of gigging, abuse, recording, and even used to knock some smchuck on their a*s. My poor little microKORG has finally succumbed to hardware failure. at least it can be repaired...but....in my financial situation thats going to be many months of saving.... I write and do everything on it before i take it on any other instrument....its been with me a long time... It was my huge step up from a Yammie PSR-3 and the Cassie CTK-501 in sound and was truly my gateway into synthesis...

I used it in almost everything I did anything in my studio....anyone else have a synth like that? and do you have a backup in case it fails or goes under?

[sequentialsoftshock]

What needs repaired? I feel super inspired by both the MEK and Pro~One. If the latter were to go out, the Evolver could kind of do it, and I also have access to a spare Prophet.
Hope yours is up and running again soon

[BlackGnosis]

What needs repaired? I feel super inspired by both the MEK and Pro~One. If the latter were to go out, the Evolver could kind of do it, and I also have access to a spare Prophet.
Hope yours is up and running again soon

its something that I've notice develope over time, mainyly the final amp board and the volume pot were going bad quick, nothing that ordering some parts and scalding my fingertips with a nice soldering iron wouldnt fix, but still,. I need to find out the extend of the damage... I know its definitely in the final amp as you could hear it play stuff while it got more and more feint then suddenly a fizzle and nothing....

[sequentialsoftshock]

That sucks. At least it's a newer design, so getting the parts shouldn't be a manhunt and you'll be able to install 'em yourself. Good luck!

[BlackGnosis]

That sucks. At least it's a newer design, so getting the parts shouldn't be a manhunt and you'll be able to install 'em yourself. Good luck!

If all else fails I could always buy one off an ingrate and turn the old one into a MK desktop mod with custom circuitry.

[Sir Ruff]

If it's that crucial, why not sell, oh, I don't know, your Virus Ti to fund a new one? With the funds from that you could buy about 5 or 6...

[nathanscribe]

Yes, it's never good when a trusted tool keels over, but at least MicroKorgs are cheap compared to, oh, an OB-8 or something.

As for fixing it yourself, I bet it's made from about three surface mount custom ICs and some crazy Japanese magic. If you solder it, it'll turn to ash and haunt you, forever playing the intro to a Killers song. Your deathbed cry will be "Mr Brightside!" and some fat American megalith of a film-maker will play you in a black & white bio-pic, giving cinema audiences something to puzzle over for the next 100 years. Your MK has sacrificed itself for your immortality, at the expense of its own anonimity.

Go out and buy something else.

[Dubersive]

I second Nathanscribe's sentiment.

Replace it with an UltraNova and tell us how it is

[Zack McConnell]

Damn. I love my MK and I completely understand where you're coming from, my condolences to you.

[nathanscribe]

I should also add, I have 2 Junos (6 & 60), 2 Teiscos (S-100P) and 2 Korg Lambdas. Don't ask why. The Juno 6 was my first proper synth almost 20 years ago, so I'd feel lost without at least one knocking about.

[Zack McConnell]

I should also add, I have 2 Junos (6 & 60), 2 Teiscos (S-100P) and 2 Korg Lambdas. Don't ask why.

Who would!? That's an AWESOME setup!

[sequentialsoftshock]

Who would!?

Because there are some people on here who might say it's redundant to have two Junos. Not saying this is how I feel though. It's usually pretty good practice to double what you can if it's something you use. Never know when a vintage instrument will fail on ya. You also never know when, if ever, you'll find some of these chips.

[nathanscribe]

It wasn't planned like that. I bought the 6 in 1991, and when in early '95 I spotted the 60 in a local shop, I bought it too. I told myself I'd sell the 6 but it never happened.

This was back in the days before eBay, mind, and all we had was the local free ad paper, shops, and the back pages of magazines. Oh, and actual physical notice boards, which is how I found the 6. It was also back before I had multi-track recording, and it was all done live to stereo. Two Junos never seemed like redundancy, it was practical.

I do agree with SSS though; these days it might be useful to have a slightly broken unit for spares if your working example is something you'd not want to lose. Didn't Vangelis used to have 8 CS-80s or something? Or was that Stevie Wonder?

[Syn303]

You also never know when, if ever, you'll find some of these chips.

Actually some synth tech's keep a small limited supply of chips, usually taken from dead or broken synths that come into their workshops. But once the main IC goes, your synth or drum machine is only as useful as a doorstop. My tech supplied me with some spare NEC µPD-444C CMOS RAM chips for my TB-303's.

@Nath, yeah the Juno-6 was my first proper synth as well back in '84 (bought it off my music teacher at high school as they were getting in a DX7 to replace it), a few years later in '87 i got a Juno-60 for about £250 that was advertised in a local newspaper. It was Vangelis who had 8 CS-80's he bought them for use as spares.

[sequentialsoftshock]

You also never know when, if ever, you'll find some of these chips.

Actually some synth tech's keep a small limited supply of chips, usually taken from dead or broken synths that come into their workshops. But once the main IC goes, your synth or drum machine is only as useful as a doorstop. My tech supplied me with some spare NEC µPD-444C CMOS RAM chips for my TB-303's.

@Nath, yeah the Juno-6 was my first proper synth as well back in '84 (bought it off my music teacher at high school as they were getting in a DX7 to replace it), a few years later in '87 i got a Juno-60 for about £250 that was advertised in a local newspaper. It was Vangelis who had 8 CS-80's he bought them for use as spares.

Yeah, luckily I have a tech that keeps a lot of spare chips, but unless you have a tech, it's hard to find online. Vintageplanet.nl has a lot, but not everything. I got pretty lucky here because the guy I take my stuff to owns about fifty boards of his own (including Prophet 10, 1, and 5, OBXa/8, Memorymoog etc) and does work with touring bands as well so he has a lot of experience and spare parts.