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Broken EX800?

2015-10-15 by slushprodukt@...

Hi,


I'm hoping people will be able to advise me about the state of my EX800 and the likely chances of getting it back into working order.


I bought an EX800 on eBay a month ago. After it arrived, I wrote a computer program to control it over USB MIDI. I was able to trigger notes, both on and off, although I never managed to modulate the VCF (the manual says this is option 3). Anyway, a few days later I was experimenting with my software and suddenly, for no apparent reason, the EX800 seemed to crash. It made a crazy sound which I could only stop by switching the synth off.


When I switched it back on, I realised that all the "programs" had been scrambled. Going through the parameters, many of them are now nonsensical (eg. a value of 4 when it should be either 0 or 1). Most of the patches now sound exactly the same: noise, no DCO, with some fast MG filtering.


Much more importantly... The synth is no longer capable of producing a sawtooth wave. It just sounds exactly the same as the square wave.


It's strange, but I guess an accident like this is to be expected with a 31 year-old synth.


This is my first time using an EX800. I have no experience with it or the Poly800. Has anyone seen problems like this before?


I was going to buy the Hawk800 and Atomahawk kits anyway, but now I'm wondering two things. Does this EX800 have a permanent malfunction? If not, will the Hawk800/Atomahawk upgrades solve whatever problem it does have?


Any advice would be greatly appreciated.


Thanks for reading.

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