Repair Roland MC-303 Groovebox Reparatur Service

3. Februar 2021

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Repair Roland MC-303 Groovebox Reparatur Service

Roland MC-303 Groovebox. The customer of this unit complained that some buttons weren't working. Especially the transpose button. So he never could address the Bass Drums for example.

Opening this box I immediately spotted this. I was, one more time, surprised about the filigree work that was done here. Someone took the biggest gauge in wire he had on hand to bridge broken solder connections. This is not the way a broken pcb should be repaired.

I removed the wire harness and now I could see what happened. There were some broken pcb traces due do a crack in the pcb, which was causing some buttons not to work.

Everybody has it's own technique to repair things. My way was to use some fine kynar wires to put it across the broken traces and protect it with a layer of green solder mask. In this picture it don't shows up that I also fixed the broken trace on the left hand side.

After I repaired the traces I could desolder and replace all the tactile buttons. Two different types were used here. One for the switches and another type for the black and white keys.

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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