Hey I ended up being the person who bought this after you, found out by looking for repair tips haha. I was able to get inputs by drowning it in deoxit. They’re all still touchy, especially the keypads, but it was enough to make it through the diagnostic screen. Still gonna end up replacing them all but at least it’s somewhat playable now
That's great. I took it apart and cleaned the exterior and had it so clean. It is a nice one for sure cosmetically and doesn't look like it was played much at all or put in a hot attic.
I had the same issue with my RM1x. Got mine from a flea-market for 80€ without power-supply. Luckily I had a suitable power-supply lying around but unfortunately like yours half the buttons didn't work and the other just worked every now and then. Would recommed to keep it and repair though when you find the time. These machines get rarer and more expensive with time.Finding one later might for a suitable price might not work out. The buttons are easy to replace once you get comfortable with desoldering components. Maybe practice desoldering on some other scrap electronics boards. Also the potentiometers and knobs where (two years ago) quite easy to find on ebay. So repair was feasable for me. In the end I exchanged the floppy with one of these chinese GoTek-floppy-to-USB-adapters. The pre-configured ones go from 90 -130€ which I skipped by choosing a unconfigured 13€-model. This did take some timkering to get it to work. But now It is my main MIDI sequencer and I don't want to miss it anymore. If you choose to keep it and need some starting points - reach out to me 😉
Oooh, right. Unfortunately this comes with the territory for these machines. The tall tact switches and definitely the rubber dome switches in the keyboard keys *usually* need a full replacement. I've done mine but it it is pretty tedious. The unfortunate part is that finding one refurb'd is super rare since someone who has done the work is going to keep it more often than not. Otherwise get used to using a soldering iron and solder braid.
I wouldnt trust used gear from Guitar Center. I recently drove 40 minutes to one to see their used S88 keyboard only to find out 3 octaves of keys were broken. The manager said they should not have bought it from whoever sold it to them and they were not even allowed to give a discount because it was just brought into the store
Did the 'keyboard' buttons feel sticky? Maybe years ago something was spilt on it. Hopefully Guitar center offers to mostly refund it and you can play with it. Probably pretty simple fixes if you can use a soldering iron. Maybe replacing some microswitches, PCB cleaning, maybe a capacitor or two, that sort of thing.
@Digiphex Electronics I'm about to sell mine. It's missing a few knobs and isn't as cosmetically as nice (though the screen is perfect), last time I ran the test all knobs/buttons were working as expected (some took some coaxing to get going). Reach out if you are interested, I would love to see this on your channel (I couldn't come to grips with learning mine to well). If interested let me know and I'll give it to you for a great price. Of course I would test it fully before selling it.
I also had one but didn't spend enough time with it to figure it out but it did sound really good, better than other more popular groove boxes at the time, and still does today. I really thought deep house and drum and bass sounded good on it. Would definitely like to hear what can be done with it on this channel The person I bought it from said a lot of good things about the sequencer and being able to perform live with it.
Thanks for that. I think as I have done more research on these, there are some weaknesses and points of failure on them. If it worked today, it probably would start to fail. Especially if it sits around without use like my stuff does! Maybe I should get the Seq Teak and call it a day.
Have you tried contact cleaner spray on the buttons? Obvious and probably too late but in my experience of buying synths, can be a good test of whether the contacts are dead.
