Hey there.
I woke up this morning to my Octatrack MKII not switching on anymore.
Confused at first, I realized that, in a moment of confusion, I was accidentally connecting my Machinedrum Mk1 PSU yesterday and all LEDs flashed up orange.
Since the Elektron Support is on “reduced capacity” - does anyone here know the internal architecture of the Octa MKII and know which component got damaged/needs to be replaced?
I have a show coming up very soon and would love to get it repaired by someone local before that.
This is why i bought a label printer, so I can notate which adapter is which and what amps/voltage/polarity they are, eegh!
Even being able to tell which adapter goes to which device since a number of manuals don’t correlate the exact requirements to what is included, sometimes with more / less amperage or even voltage.
I dislike having to look up Reverb listings to match the PSU model and form factor with what i was sent.
I destroyed my first beloved made all my first songs on drum machine like this. Wishing for the best outcome for you and going to get out the label printer.
Now i know
Didn’t realize AC was a thing until that moment. It didn’t smell at all. Just some LEDs flashing up orange. It was connected for a few seconds only until I realized.
Elektron support replied in the meantime, saying it should be easy to fix once they are fully staffed again.
The orange lights happened only in the very moment I connected that PSU and went off when I plugged it out.
Now when connecting the original one, nothing happens.
Not sure if there was a humming as I was listening to music when it happened.
You probably fried the board. You’ll have to contact Elektron and probably have them replace it. It cost me about $300 when I accidentally fried the USB port on my Analog Rytm by plugging the USB cable in upside down. Sucks.
With enormous luck they added some kind of reverse polarity protection. Perhaps a Skottsky diode to replace.
Happend to me once with a A&H device
Worked flawlessly after replacing a fried diode of about €1,20 although AC current behaves a lot different then reversed DC. Again with luck. May the force be with you (;
Sorry to hear about your OTMKII.
Very likely it’s the internal fuse that is blown. Do you have access to a qualified repair technician? If so it should be a fairly simple job to check if the fuse is broken and then change it. The fuse part nr should be marked next to it on the PCB.
Depending on your OTMKII batch the fuse might be obsolete but equivalents are available.
Hope this helps and you manage to get it repaired before the show!
Thanks for the hint - I just gave it to a repair technician, if it is really just the fuse it’s quite likely that I get it back right in time for the show.
Any decently designed piece of gear should have reverse polarity protection, so hopefully it’s just a protection diode that failed (not the easiest repair in the world when you’re dealign with tiny, surfacemount parts, but still fairly minor). Or maybe a capacitor since the OT should have some extra filtering to deal with noise from its switching PSU (I hope it does, anyway), and capacitors don’t like reverse voltage.
OT doesn’t have a fuse.
The good thing is that the ii/power board is pretty simple so a competent tech should have no trouble working on it, at least enough to figure out what happened and whether there’s more serious damage.
Ah, ok. I forgot those were a thing, that’s good news! Kind of defeats the purpose of a fuse to make it non user-replaceable, but I’ve seen full size fuses soldered in on old gear, too.
unless the user knows how to solder smd parts
anyway, now just need to arrange a fuse (impossible to find one in town before the show) but at least I know my octa is not totally busted.
Right, but most people don’t and even if you do, the OT is an expensive piece of gear. I’ve done a decent amount of SMD soldering and some rework and I’d be hesitant to work on the OT just because the stakes are high.
I understand it would be nice to have big fuses mounted in socket, but it’s still a very minor repair to fix an SMD fuse compared with a burnt PCBA or possibly house.
