Vintage Synth Explorer Forums

Hey all,

Just got my first "real" synth, a fairly clean, fresh-looking Roland D-10. For the price I paid, it sounds extraordinary, but I do have some problems. The D-10 has been freezing up at random, refusing to start at times, and dropping out of tune at others. Thing is, these can be temporarily resolved by a simple swat to the underside of the synth, which leads me to believe something has come unseated or is loose.

I've just changed the battery, which has alleviated some of the problems, but not all of them. Any ideas here?

I had the exact same problem with my D-20, some weeks after I bought it it started doing exactly what you describe. And the classic swat would sometimes solve it but not for long. I just sold it as is because the highest octave was also dead, and a phone call to Roland told me it would cost a lot to fix.

Later I got a D-50 that started to act up a month after purchase, it had the same symptoms but I managed to live with that for years. Last year I got a tech to take it home and fix it. Turns out it was a slightly loose chip on the expansion board.

So you may be right about something loose in your D-10. Finding it can be difficult though.

D-Collector wrote:I had the exact same problem with my D-20, some weeks after I bought it it started doing exactly what you describe. And the classic swat would sometimes solve it but not for long. I just sold it as is because the highest octave was also dead, and a phone call to Roland told me it would cost a lot to fix.

Later I got a D-50 that started to act up a month after purchase, it had the same symptoms but I managed to live with that for years. Last year I got a tech to take it home and fix it. Turns out it was a slightly loose chip on the expansion board.

So you may be right about something loose in your D-10. Finding it can be difficult though.

Did your tech say which chip it was?

It was one of the 2 ROM chips on the M.Ex. multitimbral expansion card for the D-50, so it's not related to any D-10/20 chips.

D-Collector wrote:It was one of the 2 ROM chips on the M.Ex. multitimbral expansion card for the D-50, so it's not related to any D-10/20 chips.

Ah, OK... There are two ROM chips in the D-10, and I noticed they are removable... Might be a good place to start. The front panel needs its buttons checked, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to disconnect some of the cables from it. They're not soldered on, but their connectors are unusually plucky

Yeah, if the chips are socketed you should remove'em and check if the pins are corroded or dirty in some way. When my S-330 started freezing and resetting I cleaned the CPU chip pins with electronics cleaner, after that the sampler was as good as new. No problem since.

Hehe, the buttons on the D-20 became so difficult after a while in my bedroom, probably a lot of dust got into the contacts and I had to press very hard for some of them to work.