Xpantastic!

Hi Tony,
 
Here is a link to the battery:
 
 
 http://www.digikey.com/product-search/en/battery-products/batteries-non-rechargeable-primary/394467?k=P226-ND
 
 
All electrolytics will wear out with age. However the ones under the most stress ( ie..  power supply filters )  will usually fail sooner.
 
Ceramics will change their capacitance with age, but its pretty rare to see one fail.  Most of the ceramics used in the Xpander are bypass caps to keep the power supply lines to the digital chips clean.  If they are out of spec no one would ever notice. 
 
As far as your voiceless voices: Look at Cx49  ( I think x is the voice number )  on the analog voice board.  I have seen this cap fail many times. It will definetly cause a tune fail.  
 
When shopping for caps look at the MTBF ( Mean time before failure)  number.   The larger this number the better the reliability,
 
 
I would recomend Panasonic as a vendor because they list this number in their data. 
 
 
One final note.   The voice boards use polyprop caps for setting the VCO's and VCF's  frequency.  They don't look anything like an electrolytic.
but they are special caps that are hard to find these adays.  I would leave these alone. 
 
 
 
Best Of Luck  
 
 
Karl
    
   
   


On Sunday, February 22, 2015 1:16 PM, "cappy2112@... [xpantastic]" <xpantastic@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
  


  


Happy New Year Xpander/M12 owners,


For the sake of prevention, I want to replace the battery in my Xpander, as well as the caps
on the power supply board.


At the moment, the battery looks clean, no signs of leakage.

For those who have replaced batteries, would you post the part # and vendor information?

Are there any calibration settings that need to be backed up like on the OB-8, or does the battery just back up the patches?

C3 is showing signs of deterioration, so I will just replace all of the electrolytic caps (C1, C3, C4, C5, C6, C7,C8, C9, C15).

Do I also need to replace the non-electrolytics (C11, C1C13, etc) ? Do these degrade over time?

After I get the battery & power supply overhauled, I'll start on the voice board, and will ask for advice when I get there. I know 1-2 of the voices failed auto tune, and sound a little squarely. I'll disable the good voices so I can focus on these. I know Karl, PeWe and others can diagnose which parts are likely to be bad just from the decryption of the symptoms.

There are ceramic & other non-electrolytics on the processor board. Do these need to be replaced?

Would you post high quality brands to use for the caps, I'd rather avoid the cheap stuff.
Also, preferred vendors would be welcome. I'm OK with Digikey, Jameco, Mouser.

If there are other components that should also be replaced do to degradation with age, please suggest them as well.

Thanks for your advice!!


Tony