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Yamaha CS-15 Restoration


gilwe

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I've been working on restoring this beauty the past few days. This mainly means a recap job and some cosmetic job (which as you will find had a minor flaw at the end, unfortunately).

 

 

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Old CS-15 is taken apart !

 

 

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knobs are getting washed.

 

 

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Recapping the main boards.

 

 

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Recapping the power supply and keyboard assigner.

 

 

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Installing a new power led.

 

 

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Installing new envelope leds.

 

 

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New leds installed !

 

 

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Chassis cleaned, waiting for installation.

 

 

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Boards are installed back into the chassis.

 

 

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Mounting the boards.

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Synth restoration completed !

 

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A small flaw. The glue I used for mounting the slider cap, melted the plastic underneath and left an ugly mark. Too bad, as the synth almost doesn't have a single scratch on it ! aarrrrgggg.....

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Nice work! I had to snicker when I saw the pic of the knobs being washed. I do the same thing, and have a few pics of knobs/buttons/slider caps going through the same process. :)

 

How come you replaced the LEDs? Were the old ones bad, or did you want to put brighter ones in?

 

I take it your recapping surgery was successful. ;)

 

When summer is over I plan on doing a full restoration and (if necessary) a recap of my MKS-80. I cleaned it when I got it but it needs a backlight and a new MIDI message LED, and a tune-up couldn't hurt.

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The leds it had were probably installed by a previous owner ... There was a green one for power and yellow for one of the envelopes. I wanted to have it stock, so I replaced with a series of red ones as well as new holders (looks nicer). The new leds are brighter, which is quite nice actually. The envelope leds respond to every key click.

 

The synth sounds pretty amazing !! I just had an hour of session with it and I can't stop ! so simply built but very powerful. I really keen on those analog Yamaha's. Need to find another CS40M or better, a CS60/80. I once bought a CS40M but had troubles making it play as I got home, and eventually returned it to the seller... too bad as it's a killer monosynth (well, duo actually).

 

Recapping is a great idea when it doesn't take too much time and effort (wouldn't do that to my JP8...)

but I really like the results of my recapped MS-10 and now, CS-15 :thu:

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Nice job gilwe! Looks fantastic.

 

 

Nice work! I had to snicker when I saw the pic of the knobs being washed. I do the same thing, and have a few pics of knobs/buttons/slider caps going through the same process.
:)

How come you replaced the LEDs? Were the old ones bad, or did you want to put brighter ones in?


I take it your recapping surgery was successful.
;)

When summer is over I plan on doing a full restoration and (if necessary) a recap of my MKS-80. I cleaned it when I got it but it needs a backlight and a new MIDI message LED, and a tune-up couldn't hurt.

 

Haha! Me too on the knobs. I even scrub them with a toothbrush. I have a couple of mod/upgrade jobs coming in myself. I'm looking forward to the sweet smell of solder.

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Very good work, Gilwe! Now the unit just needs "Don Solaris" mods:

 

http://homepage.mac.com/synth_seal/files/ds_cs15/CS-15%20mods.pdf

 

 

Believe or not, Kevin Lightner the synth legend used them! He contacted me recently regarding mods. And also proposed another one - lfo high speed.

 

To speed it up you just need to go to lower capacitance. The stock is 0.68uF on the LFO chip. That makes it go up to 100 Hz. You can go as low as 0.033uF and have audio rate(!) modulations for some extreme osc FM, filter FM and AM stuff.

 

The trick is, you replace the existing 0.68uF with 0.033uF. Then you add a switch in parallel with 0.68uF on it. When engaged you'll have near-original rate (0.71uF total capacitance). When off, you'll got audio rate.

 

This is the fastest way to do it. The other way would be to connect them in series. Then you don't need to put out the stock capacitor. But you'll have to cut the PCB before or after the capacitor, and put a switch with 0.033 in series. This is in case you want original 100 Hz with stock 0.68 uF. Cause with 0.71uF (from previous example) the LFO will be a little bit slower in "default" position.

 

With all these mods, you'll have a serious - modular sounding beast!

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