Vintage Synth Repair

I forgot to say I got interested in the Omni after
hearing my Quadra..I'm guessing they sound similar? Or
am I way off? I thought it might be cheap alternative
to it. Quadra's seem to be worth quite a bit these
days...a bit more than I can hang on to if you know
what I mean. And I'm scared of it breaking down
again..the connection between the control panel
membrane buttons and the main board is one of the
worst, fragile..easy to rip and ruin forever, designs
I think I've ever seen.

I also have a RS-505 Paraphonic which I think is
similar to the omni...I do really love the 505 it is
one of the warmest, sweetest sounding string synths
I've ever used..It's become a real favourite since I
got it a while back.

Phil.



--- Malte Rogacki <gacki@...> wrote:

> At 17:08 Uhr +0100 08.05.2008, Philip wrote:
> > On the subject of arp stuff..Ive been thinking of
> > getting an Arp Omni but how come nearly every
> single
> > one I see is broken, not working, in need of
> repair
> > etc?
> 
> There has been some discussion about this in the
> past few days. Some
> components inside the Omni are prone to failure.
> 
> Here is a good description of the two typical
> problems:
> 
> http://www.oldcrows.net/~oldcrow/synth/tips.txt
> 
> The Omni uses quite a number of series 4000 CMOS
> chips; and also a huge
> number of tantalum caps. The one I'm currently
> trying to fix had a number
> of those chips and a number of those caps blown. The
> chips are very cheap;
> and I substituted electrolytic caps for the tantalum
> caps in the gating
> circuit. This got me about halfway to a working Omni
> - all voices produce
> sound now; and the gating circuits basically work
> (there are still some
> other problems, though).
> 
> Anyway, it's a totally great sounding poly ensemble
> synth. The sound of
> those divide-down synths certainly is something
> special.
> 
> The parts are cheap and mostly generic. I'm still
> learning all this stuff
> but I consider the Omni one of the easier to
> understand synths,
> circuit-wise. So if you want to learn to fix
> something a cheap non-working
> Omni might be a ticket.
> 
> -- 
> Malte Rogacki gacki@...
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> "Don't forget to TURN ON THE SYNTHESIZER. Often this
> is the reason why you
>  get no sound out of it." (ARP 2600 Owner's Manual)
>
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> 



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