Repair Roland TB-303 Vintage Analog Synthesizer Reparatur Service (Robert Babicz)

10. November 2016

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Repair Roland TB-303 Vintage Analog Synthesizer Reparatur Service

Roland TB-303 restoration repair. This 303 belongs to my good fellow and acid expert Robert Babicz aka Rob Acid. He brought in in with several issues. Sync suddenly stopped working. Buttons were skipping. He could only use it with batteries, DC in was intermittent. Robert wanted to have his 303 working perfect for his gigs.

The problem with the DC in was a quick find. It's very common that these DC jacks are corroed, have cold solder joints or, like here, are broken somewhere.

Repair Roland TB-303 Vintage Analog Synthesizer Reparatur Service

The issue with the sync was a burned resistor. I cannot really tell what happened here, but I guess this was accidently pluged into something wrong. However, replacing that resistor made the 303 sync again.

Roberts 303 had a lot of weak solder joints. No wonder. Robert is one of those who uses the 303 a lot.

Some solder joints that still work but show signs of lifted traces. I took care about every single weak solder joint.

I also cleaned up the mess someone soldered here before. I don't think this is factory. It worked, but it looked aweful. In this picture I started to clean this up.

I replaced all the tactiles. While doing this some the connector wires broke and I fixed that too. I also cleaned all the potentiometer.

There are lethal voltage exposed in electronic devices. Unless you know what you are doing, don’t try this. If you following along, you doing so at your own risk.

I’m documenting repairs for my reference and yours. I do synth restorations and repair with a specialty in vintage synthesizers, drum computer and other vintage gear, based in Düsseldorf, GER. Get in touch about your synth situation!

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