Repaired and modded synth jam

YouTube Uploaded by ChrisLody on Feb 13, 2012

This is a little synth jam that i've been planning for a while. All of the synths and effects in this video have been repaired by me over the last few years. Here's what i used:

Korg Poly 800 (far left)

I bought this from a cash generator for £30 and found it had a scrambled memory, missing joystick and a dead oscillator. A previous owner had modded the battery compartment to take a pp3 instead of the usual 6 D cells. I replaced the battery and fitted a knob to the joystick to make it usable. It was years later that my electronic skill were good enough to track the dead oscillator down to a faulty op-amp. With the help of the forum below i was able to replace it and get it up and running.

http://music-electronics-forum.com/t24095/

While i had the thing i bit i decided to add the 'Moog Slayer' and 'Filter FM' mods to it which make it much more fun :D

http://synthmod.net/korg/moog_slayer/


Yamaha SY35 (bottom right)

I found this poor thing at a carboot sale for £5. It look like it had been kept in a leaky shed, and played like it! Most of the keys would not respond at all so the whole thing had to be stripped down and the contacts cleaned out. It also had a dead battery backup which i replaced with a AAA battery holder to make life easier in the future. The volume slider was also fried and i could not find a replacement so it it permanently wired up on full volume. I programmed a purely FM pad type sound into it using the wonderful SY edit:

http://www.plompy.co.uk/software/


Korg microKorg (back left)

I bought this microKorg from new but one day when i turned it on it sounded like this http://youtu.be/6S4e3IZzy4k

I contacted Korg who basically told me it was a write off. Once i had repaired my Poly 800 i felt confident enough to have a go at this one too. Once i'd managed to get it open i found there was a tiny burned out track on the circuit board. I have no idea what caused it but i managed to find a couple of solder pads that linked the track and connect them back together. Job done! I'm using it here for arp duties and to process the drums.


Casio SK100 (top right)

The wife got this for me for xmas from ebay and was sold to her as 'perfect working order'. It was not! Nothing too serious, just a battery spring that had completely rotted away and a shoddy power socket. I salvaged a battery spring from the junk pile and managed to 'persude' the power socket to work with a bit of brute force. The patch i'm playing on this was made by whistling into the mic.


Korg DDD5 (back middle)

This was also sold to the wife on ebay as 'perfect working order'. It had 3 broken push buttons, a dead battery (again!) and very dodgy data slider. I managed to replaced the buttons with identical types and did the usual trick of using an AAA battery holder for the dead battery. The data slider is still crap but is usable, just. A word to the wise, if you take one of these apart, be careful to label things up so you know where everything goes. The insides were designed by a SADIST! I couldn't find a manual for this but learned all i needed from the DDD1's manual which is available online.

http://cyborgstudio.com/drummachinemanuals.html#Letter K


Kaoss pad mini (mid left)

When i got this the screen was dented so constantly thought it was being pressed in the same place and therefore useless. I replaced the black plastic sheet in front of the sensor with some plastic from a router bit packet. This was perfectly smooth on the back and so perfect for the job. This isn't even mine and i've never met the guy that my band mates borrowed it off. I hope he doesn't mind me repairing it o_O

...oh and keep an eye out for the cat :D"