help! Casio SA-5 died somehow?!

[zephler]

I had all of my bends ready to go, with all of the wires and switches kind of pushed off to the speak side of the board since I was working on the other side.  Upon power up nothing (it was working fine before I pushed them all to one side).  I thought no big deal since somewher in the jumble of wires I might be causing a short - so I kind of shook the mass of wires and bingo - the thing worked.  The next day (I had still not cleaned up the wire tangled mess), I powered up the device, but nothing.  I jumbled the wires again and still nothing.  I then removed every wire and solder point from the board - powered up - nothing.  Can ANYONE suggest how I can methodically go through each component on the board to see if it is functioning right, or to determine what happened?  Could it be that a wire somehow erased an IC chip program?  Do the Casio's have some sensitive IC or something?  I am praying that it is a diode, resistor or something that can easily be replaced - how would I know if it's an IC or something worse that is gone?  I can still get a crackle if I connect pins from one IC to another, or from the same IC to itself - so I know that the speaker is still working.  ANd I have a multimeter, so I can test voltages at points in the board and on components.....help!  What can I test?

[Dylan]

My SA2 died many times. If I just set it aside and didn't fuss with it (after I took all the bends out) for a week or two, it usually worked again. Look at the IC's very closely, you may have just bridged two pins by accident.

[Gleix]

The SA-5 I did awhile back was extremely unstable after I added a ton of mods and was ready to close it up... not sure why. It just did some weird things and died like yours numerous times while I was in the process of wiring up the controls.

There might be some interference between wires, despite there being no actual metal-to-metal contact.  I've had that problem in numerous instruments.

[manufactured zero]

I've had loads of hassle with crystal switching with them in the past. Fine until you close them up. But as soon as you put the screws in and get ready to make some noise the little shit stops working. A few times it's been a total mystery since it will suddenly work again once you open it up. I've had none of this since using ltc1799's though. I wonder if it might be all the wires pushing the board downwards and breaking the contact with the power switch. Wouldn't explain the temperamental crystal game but would explain a lot of 'play dead' incidents with the sa's.

[dimefan90]

i had the same problem

http://www.circuitbenders.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,1221.0.html

[Gleix]

Dealing with the crystal in the SA-5 was annoying as HELL for me! Eventually I left it as it was... What the SA-5 did when you started it up was it would start on a two octave lower pitch. I put a body contact on it that would bring it up to normal tone.  I couldn't understand it nor could I find the exact source of the problem.

[Tyler1144]

My SA2 died many times. If I just set it aside and didn't fuss with it (after I took all the bends out) for a week or two, it usually worked again. Look at the IC's very closely, you may have just bridged two pins by accident.

Yes thats true, after looking at some "broken" ones i had, i noticed that sometimes there would be a hair-thin string of solder or thinner connecting points. I use those poky radioshack soldering iron tools to scrape the solder away because they dont seem to have any other use lol.

[Gleix]

My SA2 died many times. If I just set it aside and didn't fuss with it (after I took all the bends out) for a week or two, it usually worked again. Look at the IC's very closely, you may have just bridged two pins by accident.

Yes thats true, after looking at some "broken" ones i had, i noticed that sometimes there would be a hair-thin string of solder or thinner connecting points. I use those poky radioshack soldering iron tools to scrape the solder away because they dont seem to have any other use lol.

Invest in a cheap little desoldering bulb. Works wonders.