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Chroma Polaris, RIP


ElectricPuppy

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  • 3 weeks later...
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Puppy, your post took away the fear of owning a Polaris. After sealing the deal I would like to know your opinion on how to handle the membrane thing.

 

So far everything is working fine. I wonder if I should disconnect the membrane panel and make a connector so that foil will not be bend anymore in a 180 degree angle, rather being more or less straight.

 

Another thing I can do is to sandwich the membrane connectors in some stiffer kind of mylar and use the original connection in the hope that the support structure will prevent cracking.

 

Of course, I can leave things alone until the membrane starts cracking!

 

Let me know your 2 cents please.

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Well, if it's working, leave it alone! :D

 

But if I had to do it again, I think I would do it differently. I'd cut off the ribbons to the point where they weren't bent, remove the original connectors and then plug those onto the ribbon stubs and let them just hang freely. Then I'd point-to-point wire those to back to the boards.

 

The reason I didn't do that in the first place was that there wouldn't be any mechanical mounting of the connectors. Maybe that's not such a horrible thing, but I wouldn't want to bounce the keyboard around too much with the connectors being supported solely by the ribbons. Those ribbons are brittle.

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  • 2 years later...
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Progress report:

 

The Polaris still lives with my hacky repairs. Now it's developing other problems, but nothing insurmountable. It's starting to get jumpy sliders, where it'll suddenly change a patch parameter. I've found a quick way to overcome that is to just exercise the sliders through their full ranges a few times and then reselect the patch I want and it stays stable for a long while. Probably I just need to clean-out the sliders.

 

Thing is, the sliders they used are SUPER flimsy. I'd like to replace them, but so far as I know, there's no replacements available anymore that will fit the same pad layout.

 

It's also starting to develop an intermittent buzz, but I can fix it by wiggling the output jack. Should be an easy fix.

 

Finally, the output is lacking in low-end, as compared to other synths I've got. Not like a hard 24db roll-off or anything, it's just a kind of lack of balls, if you will. I read somewhere (maybe at the Rhodes Chroma site?) that replacing the final output op-amp with a better one will improve this. I just haven't tried it yet.

 

At any rate, the thing still lives in all its 6-voice analog-y goodness. :D

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