Akai AX73 service manual?

[Gordonjcp]

Anyone got a copy of this, either a PDF or paper copy?  If anyone's even got a working AX73 that they could have a look inside, that would help too...

[Circuitbenders]

I just asked a guy i know who works for Numark and supposedly has access to this kind of stuff, and was told that they don't have any information about any early Akai kit as it all 'went missing' when they were bought up by Numark/Alesis

I'm not entirely sure what to make of that....................

[natere2ster]

Whats wrong with your Akai?

Cheers,

Nate

[Gordonjcp]

Nothing much, now...  I actually got a manual from a guy in the US.  I don't want to spam someone else's commercial stuff, but if anyone wants I will pass on his eBay username.  I'm pretty reasonably happy with the price (about £30 all in, once you convert from USD) and the manual is indeed a real genuine Akai manual in a real genuine Akai plastic wrapper and not a shoddy photocopy.  2700 feedback responses with 99.87% positive obviously earned ;-)

Anyway, the display was gubbed.  Someone had snipped the ribbon cable right at the display.  I re-crimped it back on (IDC connector soldered to the LCD) but broke a small through-hole resistor in doing so.  A bit of guesswork and I found a 10K resistor got it going - but only if I added my own contrast pot since the one on the back of the unit has been smashed to pieces.  Dear knows how, but the pot spindle was rattling around loose inside!

The choruser was stuck on.  I had visions of needing to track down faults in the PIO chips (what, a weird, single-bit-stuck fault?  Could be...) but it turned out that the chorus and jack board was cracked, right across.  A bit of scraping and bridging and it was good as new.

Finally it had a couple of sticky keys, so I removed the contact PCBs and gave the rubber (concentric conductive rings for the velocity-sensitive keyboard) and PCB a good scrub with IPA.  They're all working fine now.  I stripped the keys off and gave them a wash, and they feel all nice and clean.

Now all I need to do is give the rest of the case a good clean, devise some way to reattach the spot-welded standoffs that hold the control panel PCB to the top cover - JB Weld probably, don't want to burn the paint with real welding ;-) - and make u p new end panels.  One of the plastic panels is smashed, and the other is cracked.  I will probably just hack up a bit of old Ikea shelf to construct wooden sides, because wooden sides are teh awsum.

[Circuitbenders]

what the hell had happened to it to get it in that condition?

Sounds like it might have been thrown from a speeding train!

[Gordonjcp]

No idea; I got it from a guy who had rescued it from *somewhere* in a fairly sorry state and not done much with it.  Oddly enough it was sitting in his flat about a year ago when I got some books from him on freeshare, and was still sitting there with the dust a little thicker when I got a DJ mixer off him many many months later ;-)  I expressed a bit of interest in it, and he said just to take it away.  Woot.

[JonathanG]

Did anyone ever track down the Akai AX73 service manual? There is currently one on Ebay, but I really have a problem with shelling out $25 + $6 shipping for a xeroxed photocopy.

[Gordonjcp]

I've got a copy, from "vstservice" on eBay.  It wasn't very expensive and it was a real genuine copy.

[Circuitbenders]

ahhh, vstservice. the same people who charge £105 for a replacement floppy drive and were actually attempting to sell a blue SH101 battery door for $149 

[Gordonjcp]

They do have some pretty odd ideas about pricing.  Stuff I'd expect to be expensive-ish like service manuals are about 20 quid, odd bits of plastic are a fortune.

I bet they don't shift many of the expensive items.  Maybe that'll clue them in.

Anyway, in answer to the original post, what do you need to know from the service manual?