Deconstruct / Reconstruct

[shigginpit]

I take a lot of stuff apart, most of it gets put back together.
If I get new (used) gear, I take it apart, clean it, service it and then reassemble.

While I’m certainly not a good photographer, someone else probably is so I’ve been thinking we need a place to post a pic of our things we’ve broken down and then built back up - or not built back up, might be fun to see a few that got worse instead of better.

So, whether it was the bathroom you added in your basement or your grungy new piece of early 2000’s gear, how about adding a pic of the breakdown and a pic of the reconstruction for everyone to enjoy.

The SP-202 in question smelled like chainsmoker and had scratchy pots as well as some other minor issues which I serviced, now fully back up to speed. The pitch effect on these machines is incredible. Was unable to get the aged color out of the pads but after much effort all odor is gone and I can touch it without washing my hands.

So whatcha got?

[shigginpit]

When I got my second Digitakt it needed a new plastic bezel and it was filthy, otherwise there was nothing wrong with it. I already had a spare Digitone bezel, so I did a full teardown, removed the cracked one, disinfected the whole thing, lubricated the volume pot and encoders then installed the DN bezel. I cut a smartphone screen protector to fit the new bezel and installed that at the same time.

Everything great now, much joy. I have lots of pics of taking stuff apart but it’s going to be boring for me to be the only one posting so if anyone else wants to get in on the action, everybody is welcome to join in.

[Kegeratorz]

Looks great!!

[tapesky]

Inside the Yamaha MX49. This keyboard is easy to disassemble and has a really nice service manual.

Pesky ribbon cable making a couple of keys noisy. I tucked it in better. Also cleaned out the dust.

Look at this nice through-hole board for the audio!

[shigginpit]

You should add one of it all buttoned up when you have a chance, looks great! I love older Yamaha stuff.

[lomn]

Hey came by this post after trying to do some research on the elektron devices. Felt like I could share this blog post.
It’s a very simple overview of the digitakts inside, some information is redundant to what @shigginpit wrote above, but I try to quickly go over the main components that power the device.
It may be of interest for the curious ones.

edit : Since I don’t know about the elektron devices a few rectifications here

• First of, it is actually very plausible that elektron keeps on using coldfire µC just beceause they have the existing code base and it would be really painfull to port it to a new architecture.
• The debug interface seem to be BDM rather than JTAG
• I’m still confused on why the eMMC memory is so big compared to the actual available user usable space on the device.

[shigginpit]

Nice man, welcome to the forum. Cool that you set up a github page as a resource. I seem to remember a thread with some theories as to why the memory is larger than the actual available user useable space, but you’ll have to search around a bit, people here like to conjecture on the unknown.

If it will help your page (for illustrative purposes) you’re welcome to download and use this video clip from some digitakt or digitone I serviced which just briefly illustrates how to safely disconnect the flat ribbon cable from the upper PCB using esd tweezers without separating the PCB from the faceplate.

Thanks for sharing your findings!

[lomn]

Cheers, I think I will update or create a repair post at some point if it can help anyone.
On an unrelated note I wasn’t able to find good pics of the insides of the digitone, especially the main board, do you happen to have saved any ? I’m interested in the hardware differences between the digitakt and digitone.

[shigginpit]

I’ll take a look in my archives later, they’re very similar.

[Kultschar]

Great projects - ive never understood people who sell dirty gear. I always give it a clean before listing

[oliodnb]

@shigginpit

lubricated the volume pot and encoders

What did you use for this?

[shigginpit]

A couple kinds of Deoxit. I use fader grease on analog pots like the volume, but for encoders I just use the lube type. Volume pot is kind of a headache.