Dave's AN1x lives!!!!

[Dave S]

Holy shit!!!

Peter K and other Music Bar old timers may remember that back in about
2003-ish, part of my Yamaha AN1x died.

I would turn it on, and it would crash after a few seconds with a
blank screen, and never finish the power-up message.

I took it apart, and on the off-chance it would help, I removed the
"DMS XS316" DSP daughter board just to see what happened.  It fixed
the problem instantly, but I was left with a monotimbral AN1x with
only 5 voice polyphony, no ability to morph between scenes and so on.
It was half the AN1x it used to be, but still made a fine controller
keyboard and could be sampled where necessary.

Due to constant money troubles over the years, I never got around to
contacting Yamaha to get a replacement daughter board, and recently
resigned myself to the likelihood that as this synth is now 13 years
old, it's probably not possible to get the replacement parts from
Yamaha any more, and that the chances of getting a spare daughter
board without buying at the very least someone else's broken AN1x, and
perhaps even a full AN1x, were pretty remote.

Recently, I started getting a low battery warning on it (first time in
the 12 or so years I've owned it), so ordered a replacement CR2450
battery.

Tonight after removing all 33 screws necessary to open the case, and
inserting the new battery, I thought, just for shits and giggles, that
I would try re-connecting the old daughter board just in case.

It only went and worked!

I swear I tried this before when it first went wrong.  Daughter board
= crash.  No daughter board = boot.  I must have checked it 10 times
or more before giving up, and it definitely wasn't having any of it.

So, I'm fully preparing myself for the possibility that it may crap
out again soon, but for the moment, all seems to be fine.  Perhaps it
was just a dirty connection or something?  Anyway, I've switched on
and off a few times, checked out some sounds, and damn, I'd forgotten
just how amazing this synth sounds when it's working in it's full
glory.

It's like an old friend is back again, and I'm very happy indeed.
Here's hoping it keeps working, and if it does, you'll be hearing it's
return into my music soon enough.  :-D

There is something else slightly wrong with it - the ribbon controller
has gone a bit "automatic" along the X axis, in that it thinks I'm
pressing on it when I'm not.  This doesn't make the synth unusable,
but it's not optimal as it messes with the sound unless I disable the
ribbon controller in the routing matrix.  Has anyone else had this
happen with a ribbon controller?  Does anyone have any ideas how to
clean it?  There are a couple of pots in there on that board which I
might try turning, as presumably they are for adjusting sensitivity,
so maybe that will fix it, but any experience anyone can pass on would
be much appreciated.

All the best,

Dave

PS. Peter, you can finally stop nagging me to get it fixed now hehehe!
 (Until it breaks again, that is, but fingers crossed that won't
happen.)