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13. Mai 2018
Repair Roland SH-101 Reparatur Service + MIDI
26. Juni 2018My friend Robert Babicz gave me this unique wooden box asking me for repair. Condition was non working, partially damaged. As I opened it up I thought (nooooooooo wayyyy). In this case most repair people would refuse a repair. The inside looked like a mess and very time consuming. Everthing inside was hanging around, loose wires, weird construction. That box was, what I call, do-it-yourself. In my mind d.i.y. (short form of do-it-yourself) is, build something with the parts you have in stock. In this case it meant: even a single wire was soldered together by different pieces of different length. All pcbs were self made. No earthing, no safety grounding. I have no idea, why so many people do that.
The box consists of an phaser module, an LFO, a WASP filter clone and a fuzz module. All can be flexible connected to each other or to a modern Eurorack.
Since there weren´t any connectors inside the 1st thing I had to do was to extend most wires so that I had a chance to disassemble and document the whole thing. That took quite a while. Once I had everything seperated I would do some research, what's all about it. One pcb was a phaser module (still don´t know excactly what phaser), another was a simple VCLFO, a (multi) WASP filter was on one pcb and last but not least there was a distortion stomp box pedal pcb. All this was powered by an old SMPSU (switch mode psu). That had seen better days. Since these are cheap these days I decided to replace that with a new one, one with more protectio circuits and a quiter one. I had to change all the wiring, all the jacks and most 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!
Since the pcb’s were self made and not protected against corrosion I had to fight with a lot of bad connections, bad, cold solderjoints, lifted or intermitten traces.
I added a fuse (!), earthing, ground and a propper mains wiring.
The wooden case also got some attention.
Here are the pictures, mostly for my own documentation, but I also share this with you guys.