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Catch-22: What do you do with damaged gear?


wheresgrant3

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I hate damaged gear period! I have a Korg DW8000 that I bought last summer used for $250. It appeared to be in pretty good shape when I received it. I used it for a total of maybe 8 hours over a month, an then ... poof... it stopped powering up. I opened it up last night and I'm guessing it is either a bad supply or power transformer.

 

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So I'm wondering what to do with this thing. I definately want to get rid of this unit... but to sell it, I have to get it working. To get it working I'm going to have to dump some money. The closest reliable shop is Rogue Music in NYC... 1 hr 1/2 away.

 

What do you guys do with vintage gear that needs to be repair... do you get it fixed, or does it sit in your closet collecting dust.

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I feel your pain :(

 

I bought an EX8000 from a user here with an ultra high post count for about $100 iirc, may have been 150. It didnt come with a power cord so I had to order one on special order from sweetwater which took a month. The seller knew that it would take this long for the cable to arrive and when it did, it of course did not work at all.

 

I asked the seller for my money back at which point he disapeared from the forums :mad:

 

I sent it to roguemusic for an estimate which was $200. I said no so they asked for $20 to ship it back which was reasonable, but I have yet to respond, this was about 4 months ago.

 

I just now remembered....

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Originally posted by TheProteus

What's wrong with it? Describe the symptoms and I can tell ya whether or not it would be worth repairing. "just stopped working" doesn't cut it - did the power just die, or is it behaving intermittently?

 

 

 

Nope... just never power up again. It worked fine. I put it in it's case. A few weeks later I pulled it out for some fun.... no power. On/off, on off, on/off... no power at all. I replaced the power cord... still no power... nada, nothing. It just stopped working.

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Get yourself a voltage meter and start from the the power cord connector inward and check for continuity. Find something that you can print out that will help decipher what each component should read (based on the component's markings). When you find the a component or trace that isn't reading correctly then you've most likely found your problem. Replace it and your DW8000 should be good to go.

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Originally posted by Jazz+

The power board to my D550 backlight is not putting out enough volts, so the light is off. I think I will throw the whole unit away...

 

 

Are you sure it's not putting out enough volts ie have you measured it or could it be that the backlight LED's have gone?

 

 

 

 

Get yourself a voltage meter and start from the the power cord connector inward and check for continuity. Find something that you can print out that will help decipher what each component should read (based on the component's markings). When you find the a component or trace that isn't reading correctly then you've most likely found your problem. Replace it and your DW8000 should be good to go.

 

 

Unless you no what you're doing it's not advisable to have a unit live while you're poking around, switch mode power supplies generate high DC volts (worst kind for shocks).

 

I must say it does sound like it could be a connection issue because of the way it failed (almost instant). But then because you haven't had it powered up for a while it's hard to say if the unit was showing signs of impending failure like flickering screen/power indication. In cases like this it's almost certainly the supply.

If you look at the board to the left of the transformer the black upright components to the middle of the board capacitors/condensors are what usually go first. Check to see if they have "domed" what I mean here is that the top of the surface is usually flat but with age what tends to happen is that the top domes outward and upward because of internal pressures. Second when these babies leak it smells a bit like bad fish. Leaking capacitors aren't happy capacitor. Not only will they operate in a sporadic manner dielectric fluid will leak onto the board and corrode through circuit tracks. Heatsink components like darlington transitors/field effect transistors "usually" go quite spectacularly and blow the surface off of the body have a good look at these.

 

I'm in a similar situation I have an sy77 that I'm thinking of selling but the floppy drive is dead and the backlight is dead and because of this I can't get top dollar. I know there is a company that sells correctly sourced drives and also a backlight company here in the uk. I've managed to source a 750k drive for

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Why not take it to a local guy who fixes TVs. If he can get his hands on a schematic it should be quite easy for him to repair it. Even without a schematic he might be able to narrow down the problem. What is is going to cost to have someone just take a look.

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That really sucks, to cheat someone else. No wonder no one trusts musicians.

 

DWs are very cheap so not worth repair cost; you can get another and use that for parts. Rogue is pretty expensive though. Try East Village Music; they are very reasonable on repairs.

 

As far as backlights go you can get them from Telesis in Ca. very inexpensively. Hardly worth trashing a synth for.

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Originally posted by cybermooks

That really sucks, to cheat someone else. No wonder no one trusts musicians.

 

You know, I hardly think that putting a keyboard on ebay with no reserve and a description that reads "This doesn't work. I think it's just the power supply, but I don't know, so best offer takes it, sold AS IS" is cheating anyone.

 

Kiru

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Originally posted by Kirumamoru


You know, I hardly think that putting a keyboard on ebay with no reserve and a description that reads "This doesn't work. I think it's just the power supply, but I don't know, so best offer takes it, sold AS IS" is cheating anyone.


Kiru

 

I thought he was reffering to this quote:

 

just sell it as is with no power cord, say you have no way of testing it, and let someone else deal with it.

 

Which if I read right is basically saying try and dupe someone into buying it, is a pretty shabby way of dealing with people :mad::(:confused:

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Originally posted by eric

If you don't want or need the keyboard and it looks like a negative or barely profiting cashflow situation, I would recommend this:


Call it art. Hang it on the wall as a conversation piece.


Regards,

Eric

 

Yeah! Or make a coffee table out of it. Or put a Mini-ITX motherboard in it. Or use it as surfboard. Or put skateboard wheels on the bottom and skate! ;):D

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If you have the know how and want to keep it, just repair it yourself. Purchase another DW and fix it. If the DW you later purchased is in better shape, then keep the old one that's not working for parts.

 

I'm doing that now with a pair of Akai AX60's. Some know how and a Digital Multimeter can go a long way with older synths.

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