ARP Omni-2 cap replacement, just an FYI...

[WhinyLittleRunt]

I just got finished repairing a leaking note problem with my ARP Omni-2. I wanted to point out to anyone who tries to replace capacitors in this thing, that I used 22uF non-polarized capacitors rated for 50 volts from Mouser.com (there weren't many choices in that category anyway - I just made sure I got radial caps, not axial). In most instructions, they say to replace all the tantalum caps inside the keyboard because they will eventually leak, but I only replaced 2 and my problem went away for now. I did this as a test because it occurred to me (with limited knowledge about small electronics) that each key corresponded to a cap. 49 keys= 49 caps. I listened for the notes that were ringing and then counted backwards on the board diagonally until I got to the cap that matched that key. We soldered in the new part, and the problem went away.

Now I realize that some Omni's are worse and have lots of leaking notes where it would probably be impossible to determine which notes were leaking, and this was really just a test to see if it worked and it wasn't hard because the leaking notes were the same note an octave apart. But anyway, I know this has been covered before - it's just an FYI.