Forays into synth repair... AND SCIENCE.

[spacebug]

The Prophet, Sigfreid, is a little sad again- the contacts are wearing out on all my C's. I realized a bit ago that I default to the key of C not just 'cause it's an easy and familiar key, but also because when you have a limited amount of keys to work with (anything under 88 feels limited when you played piano before synth, I think), it gives you the most amount of real estate. So, I bang on my C keys a lot, it turns out, and they wear out before anyone else does.

Anyway, I'm finally practicing my set for my show next weekend, and it gets a little annoying when I'm recording a loop and then have to re-do it 'cause there's a hiccup where the contact decides to stutter in the middle. Not Sigfried's fault, really, he's just showing his age. I successfully repaired the same problem 6-7 years ago by painting the contacts with conductive graphite paint. He's my main gigging synth again, so I'm going to try a repeat procedure before the show. I don't remember where I bought the conductive paint last time- online someplace- and I also don't remember learning that its primary usage is not for synthesizer enthusiasts and would-be repairpeople at all.

Nope, it's for preparing sample specimens for SEMs.

Learn something new every day.

Comments

[pied-piper70.livejournal.com]

My JV-80 is also getting a little glitchy after all these years...It's weird to think that the JV has been my main baby since 1992...It's almost as much of an artifact as Sigfried (Hurray for early sampling technology)!...I may have to take it in at some point, but it's fine...for now...

Hey, I should also mention, remember the MXR delay box I had, which we dubbed the Time Machine during the Zurround days? And remember how it stopped working and just became a noise box?
Well I brought it out, banged on it a couple times and got it working again...Not only that, I've found that it's become an exceptional frequency modulator/sweep filter...It's so good, I'm using it as my primary signal processor for my Midterm project for Computer Music I...

[hexagonalcarbon.livejournal.com]

There is also this stuff: http://www.google.com/products?q=silver+conductive+pen&btnG=Search+Products&show=dd We bought one of these pens at Que's, but never ended up using it, so I'm not sure how it works.