Patches and discussion for Ensoniq VFX family

I'm with the others here… it's a repair that you could do yourself. It only requires soldering about a half dozen wire jumpers. (can't recall the exact number at the moment, since it's been awhile since I fixed mine). You just touch your soldering iron to the point where you want to attach the wire until it heats up. then you dab some solder at the hot point (making sure to not touch the iron with the solder). The only tricky part is that the multiple wires are kind of close to one another at this junction. You need to make sure that no solder bridges one wire to another. It's well worth the effort to fix this one yourself. There are lots of soldering tutorials on the web that you could watch if you're still uncertain, but I'm confident you can do the job yourself. Make sure that synth is unplugged when you do this. And make sure that you don't leave the soldering iron heating something too long. But otherwise, that's about all there is to it. I was soldering as a kid, so you can definitely handle this one. Just take your time. It probably also helps to have an ohm meter on hand to make sure that once you've soldered a wire that it doesn't have conductivity with another wire. You can use the cheapest VOM meter you can find. And while some of the pros will mock you, you can also use the cheapo Radio Shack soldering iron for a task like this one. And once your figure out how to fix this issue, you'll be prepped for your next one. (there's always a next one lol). :) If you get stuck, just ask us on this list. It sounds like several of us have been through this repair before. About the worst that can happen is it doesn't work the first time you try (happened to me). Just remove the wires and try again. Shouldn't take you more than an afternoon to mess around with it knowing absolutely nothing beforehand. 

Best of luck! 

On Sep 24, 2010, at 2:36 PM, franzschiller@... wrote:

> That would be great, but around me, the cheapest possible repair tech is at least $60 an hour. They always quote a MINIMUM of 2 hours. Then there's parts. So I'm looking at least at $120, plus if its a mother board (as I learned in another thread here) it could be $110, equalling $230.
> 
> There's a chance I might do this still, though, even if I get some replacement. Just because I hate having broken keyboards sitting around.
> 
> But I appreciate you "can do" attitude.