Thanks! Well, I got it completely dead. This used to belong to Tandyn Almer and I ended up with a number of his old broken stuff including some Studers, a Siel DK70, Kawai K4r, and this CS. Some tech (and I think I know who) made a modification to the memory circuit for reasons I can't begin to fathom. This failed and caused a massive cascade failure that blew hundreds of components--I had to replace nearly 300 parts in here! Once I got it running I noticed one of the memory ICs was extremely hot and eventually found the mod this guy had made. Since then it's been running perfectly. The good news is that it was all off-the-shelf components that got fried--all of the custom Yamaha ICs like the VCF were spared. Cascade failures are not uncommon in vintage Yamaha gear, so I did replace the PSU with a modern switching unit. It's more reliable and will shut down if something's wrong rather than pumping voltage when it's on fire. So as long as you don't get one that was abused by a Beach Boys-adjacent songwriter then you should be fine.
@@mphtower thanks. good to know. thinking about buying one and then I read how parts are increasingly difficult to source etc.. would need to fit a midi kit. got me wondering if I wouldn't be better off buying modern...
@@edenhunter9904 Well, there's a secret I should be reluctant to share because it means destroying some otherwise good instruments, but... You can get most of the unobtainable parts for free. Yamaha Electones organs of the same vintage use the same custom Yamaha ICs. You have to do some research to find them--I haven't completely cataloged everything. But here's an example: Rather than pay $300 for an iG00153 VCO you can find a D-85, often for free. And then you also get a ton of other useful parts including hardware, some BA617s, an STK amp chip which goes for a fair bit, etc.
that´s nice! The synth certainly has a character on its own.
Damn nice!
Thanks!
Awesome 👍😎🎹🎹🎹
good job. has the synth given you any trouble?🙂
Thanks!
Well, I got it completely dead. This used to belong to Tandyn Almer and I ended up with a number of his old broken stuff including some Studers, a Siel DK70, Kawai K4r, and this CS.
Some tech (and I think I know who) made a modification to the memory circuit for reasons I can't begin to fathom. This failed and caused a massive cascade failure that blew hundreds of components--I had to replace nearly 300 parts in here! Once I got it running I noticed one of the memory ICs was extremely hot and eventually found the mod this guy had made.
Since then it's been running perfectly. The good news is that it was all off-the-shelf components that got fried--all of the custom Yamaha ICs like the VCF were spared.
Cascade failures are not uncommon in vintage Yamaha gear, so I did replace the PSU with a modern switching unit. It's more reliable and will shut down if something's wrong rather than pumping voltage when it's on fire.
So as long as you don't get one that was abused by a Beach Boys-adjacent songwriter then you should be fine.
@@mphtower thanks. good to know. thinking about buying one and then I read how parts are increasingly difficult to source etc.. would need to fit a midi kit. got me wondering if I wouldn't be better off buying modern...
@@edenhunter9904 Well, there's a secret I should be reluctant to share because it means destroying some otherwise good instruments, but... You can get most of the unobtainable parts for free.
Yamaha Electones organs of the same vintage use the same custom Yamaha ICs. You have to do some research to find them--I haven't completely cataloged everything. But here's an example: Rather than pay $300 for an iG00153 VCO you can find a D-85, often for free. And then you also get a ton of other useful parts including hardware, some BA617s, an STK amp chip which goes for a fair bit, etc.