MATRIXSYNTH: Technology Transplant Roland TR-606 PCB Replacement


Thursday, February 08, 2007

Technology Transplant Roland TR-606 PCB Replacement


Click here for Technology Transplant's Roland TR-606 PCB Replacement page. According to the site:

"On inspection. It is important to note a crucial budgetary decision made during original manufacture of the TB-303 and TR-606 for cost effectiveness.
They are made of wood-pulp material. Not of glass fibers as the new PCB you have received. The wood-pulp material, is a very inexpensive PCB that is not intended to have materials removed afterwards. This type of PCB is actually only intended for prototyping purposes. Not commercial manufacture. An unfortunate problem for these machines that has lead to the demise of thousands."

If you track back to the root of the site, you will see list of vintage synth replacement parts, however no links.

Update via Peter Grenader of Plan b in the comments:
"Actually, the original comment was correct, at least in the Tech Transplant keyboard I installed for a customer (which took me a long time to get working for reasons I will go into next) and from the looks of it, the photo posted here - these boards are made from FR3 laminate, which is paper based. It's much less expensive than FR4, which is phenolic resin. That's the upside, one which in most cases is actually passed to the consumer.

The downside - paper-based laminates are much more absorbent than FR4. Not wanting to go into a long explanation (google ' PCB outgassing'), FR3 is basically a sponge. The air moisture which is drawn into the material is held there and drawn to and out the walles of the holes once heat is applied in the soldering process, which escapes as you attempt to make a solid solder joint. ON a double sided board it'smuch less of a problem as the palting acts as a barrier (in most cases,not always). On single-sided boards with no plating in the hole, there a straight excape path. Problem is, air and escaping steam can't take the same space and voids occur in the solder joint. If you're lucky, the outgassing will be bad enough that you can actually see the escape path - the hole on top of the solder joint. These you can repair. The ones that cause the problem are the solder joints that look normal to the eye, that are actually hollow inside. It greatly compromises the integrity of the solder connection. FR3 is reliability risk.

THe asorbtion is so great that is soaks up mouisture form the air - a big problem with boards made in tempid environments such as Asia. It'scommon practice to actually bake stored FR3 boards at low temporature prior to assembly. This draws the water out and what we ended up having to do at both Tandon and Western Digital before banning the use of this laminate. I have a lot of experience with this, as I was the quality manager who issued the purge and ban.

In the TT keyboard I installed, there were over 20 bad solder joints. This assembly had not been tested. Further, they didn't pre-tin the wires coming off the board on either side, on the keyboard end or ones which were designed to be soldered onto the 303 main board. The net result of that was there were over 10 broken wires soldered to the keyboard. Long story short, if you buy one of these, do some careful inspection before you go through the misery of trying to install it. It's a pain to troubleshoot."

11 comments:

  1. What a joke.
    Not for commercial manufacture?
    The board is made of phenolic resin.

    This is the same material as Korg, Yamaha, Roland, Sony, Sansui, Panasonic, Aiwa, Pioneer, Sanyo and about ten thousand other *commercial* manufacturers use.

    ReplyDelete
  2. ditto. the same phenolic pcbs used in radios for decades.

    ReplyDelete
  3. So basically TT has nice boards with crummy soldering.

    My issue with them is if you want to buy more than one item, you have to pay separate shipping on each.
    They won't combine orders.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I had the same problem as peter on 2 of the TT kits i ordered (303, 606)

    I love the blue LEDs but they are not as easy to install as is described. I found relocating the wires to the bottom of the TT board helped with some case conflict issues.

    i am glad TT is around but it should be known that these do require some skill and patience to install.

    ReplyDelete
  5. The real problem is, of course, that we're still building things with atoms.

    Luminous beings we are, not this 'crude matter'.

    I think that Scrith is the material of the future.

    ReplyDelete
  6. re: scrith

    well, duh. it ain't the material of the past, eh?

    personally, i've always liked bakelite.

    ReplyDelete
  7. "My issue with them is if you want to buy more than one item, you have to pay separate shipping on each.
    They won't combine orders. "

    This comment just shows you have little understanding of how overwhelming the whole process of selling tons of low cost items to lots of people really is. Do you really expect him to waste time going back and forth with his customers for who knows how long for a bunch of small sales? Give the guy a break, he makes some really useful products for low prices, consider the shipping fees part of the price.

    ReplyDelete
  8. "This comment just shows you have little understanding of how overwhelming the whole process of selling tons of low cost items to lots of people really is."

    No, it shows that TT is profiteering from shipping charges while excluding real techs who buy items in quantity.
    Other companies do just fine, but if your tech hands you a bill for shipping that's more than the price of the parts, you won't complain will you?

    ReplyDelete
  9. I asked chipforbrains to buy a single potentiometer for the tr-909 (snnare drum - snappy) and he took one out of the complete set and sold it to me for an outrageously reasonable price. so i have to say that technology transplant is great to deal with. and thank the heavens someone is doing what he is doing! now if he can only (re)make the plastic tempo/volume knob for the tr-909 so my drum machine can be minty fresh again!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Technology Transplant is no longer around?

    ReplyDelete
  11. Not sure what happened to them. If you do a search for them you'll find some threads on them out there.

    ReplyDelete

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