Need help with Wavestation problem

[Karma1]

A friend of mine has a Wavestation A/D which I sold to him a year or so ago. He recently emailed me and told me that the other day when he turned it on, it powered up and starts to say Korg Wavestation on the screen, but then the screen goes blank and won't boot up. My first thought was that the battery might have gone dead. Anybody here have any thoughts about this? Does that sound like a dead battery or could it be something else? I know some synths will give a low battery warning first and some won't.

 

Also, I know from experience that when you change a battery, you need to re-initialize the synth. If that's the case, any custom sounds are lost if they are not backed up. Correct?

[Ed A.]

Seems like the battery to me, and yes, when you change the battery, all memory is wiped. The battery is what supplies power to patch memory.

[McHale]

I *DOUBT* it's the battery but it sounds like the board isn't getting a good AC connection (power supply, low voltage, etc.). When Korg synths have a dead battery, they usually power up and just make funky noises until you initialize them with a sound bank load.

 

Replacing the battery is a good thing to try, but it could be something more serious.

 

-Mc

[solomon8]

I agree with McHale. It sounds like a power problem. Try the battery and hope for the best. My Yamaha ES8 started having a similar problem. It would sometimes not start and at times when playing it would shut down and restart. I opened it up and got lucky and found a cold solder joint in the power supply. I resoldered it, quite easy to do, and it worked fine after that. Of course be sure to unplug the keyboard when you are roaming around inside, and especially if you are doing any soldering.

[Karma1]

Thanks to all for the responses.

Just to clarify, after powering up, when the screen goes blank, the power is still on and the screen still lit, but no letters or numbers.

[davidtrainman]

Hello

I own a Korg Wavestation WS1 from around 20years ago and am an amateur.

I recently wanted to upload a piano and organ sound onto it so purchased from low-res in the USA a CD with sysex patches and the like.

I used

[Moogasaur]

 

 The problem is most likely that you have a Wavestaion that has not been upgraded to the EX level. Sadly, this update is long out of production. It consisted of two ICs that contained extra waveforms, and possibly (it's been a long time now) combined with another IC that contained the OS update to I think Rev 3.19.

 

 If you transmitted a sysex bank of sounds that uses the EX waveforms to a "non-EX" Wavestation, it causes the synth to lock up /freeze. The only way to fix this is to remove the battery for a short period of time (one minute should do it) to clear those patches from the WS memory. After reinstalling the battery, and powering up the synth, it should boot up fine. All three banks of sounds will have the ROM bank of sounds automatically loaded.

 

 The problem is that even if you get your Wavestation to boot up again, if you again send any patch bank that uses EX waveforms, your Wavestation will lock up again.

[davidtrainman]

Thanks moogasaur will give it a try

[Anderton]

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Karma1 wrote:

A friend of mine has a Wavestation A/D which I sold to him a year or so ago. He recently emailed me and told me that the other day when he turned it on, it powered up and starts to say Korg Wavestation on the screen, but then the screen goes blank and won't boot up. My first thought was that the battery might have gone dead. Anybody here have any thoughts about this? Does that sound like a dead battery or could it be something else? I know some synths will give a low battery warning first and some won't.

 

Also, I know from experience that when you change a battery, you need to re-initialize the synth. If that's the case, any custom sounds are lost if they are not backed up. Correct?

---

 

I fixed a Wavestation once (don't recall what the exact problem was, this was years ago) by unplugging all the connectors, re-inserting, unplugging, and re-inserting to wipe the contacts. All it takes is a little oxidation to mess up a unit.

Once I fixed an OB-8 by removing the ICs from the their sockets, brushing the pins gently, and re-inserting. One of the Curtis filter chips had pins with dissimilar metal compared to the socket, and little hair-like metal crystals grew over a period of years that shorted out a couple pins.

If all else fails, the Korg software version of the Wavestation is actually very cool.

[midinut]

I agree with Craig. The Korg Legacy WaveStation (and M1) are the most faithful recreations of the originals as you can imagine in software. As an added plus, they both come with all the ROM cards that Korg made for them. Can't beat the price either!