Lowrey MX-2 or Rhapsody

[jjsinaz]

Thanks Jeff. BTW are you the Jeff from Royal Music? I was reading through Pompano Wayne's posts and picked up on your name there.

Based on what you are saying, I am leaning toward the HL-002 board being the culprit. From what I learned reading through Waynes thread, It seems that the HL-023 board handles the flutes and strings and those sound great. Also, the percussion seems fine as well.

Today I removed the RFI shield from the 002 board to have a look at it. I can easily identify nine (9) electrolytic caps on that board, most of which appear to have leaked, as evidenced by corrosion underneath them where the leads are soldered to the board. Is it worth trying to replace the caps in effort to correct this, or is there typically something else wrong, like a bad IC etc.

Thank you!

Jim

[Jeff Mazza]

Yup, I'm Jeff @ Royal Music.
Wayne spent a lot of time inside his MX before getting a Royale. He's a great resource and a really nice guy.

[campbellmc]

What specifically are you trying to do sound and song wise?

[jjsinaz]

Nothing specific really. I'm not a good organist. I just like to play around and I am going to try to sharpen my skills some. The organ plays pretty well as long as you turn off anything in the PCM voices section. Would I like it to work? Yes, but I'm not going to lose sleep if it doesn't. I am going to try replacing the caps on that one board and if that doesn't fix it then it will stay that way. I got the organ for free, so ...

And it is a beautiful piece of furniture LOL

[jjsinaz]

Well, got all the caps replaced on the HL-002 board. Bad news is, the problem is still there. Good news is, I didn't mess anything else up in the process. Organ still plays the same as it did before. So I guess either something else is bad on the board or the problem is with something else. I don't know if I want to keep poking at it because it does play nicely without the PCM voices. Seems like the lower notes are the worst too.

Funny thing though, whenever you use the Pedal Genius, all of the voices sound good on the pedals. But if you couple the same voice to the upper or lower manuals, it's bad.

I tested all of those caps that I took out and all but one were bad. Capacitance was about 2 or 3 microfarads on a 100 mf cap. One of the 100s tested 100 give or take but seemed flaky anyway and there was one odd ball 1 mf that tested good

Just want to say thanks again for all of you that had suggestions and helped out. I'll just enjoy the organ the way it is (until something else breaks LOL)

[dressur4]

Well most problems are capacitors and you can change the caps easy and will fix the scratchy sound. it's repairable be glad you don't need new ICs they are most likely unobtainable but caps are always available Get out your soldering station those boars are old enough to have only one layer I would think and are soldered to lands on the opposite side of the board. I think. not the worse case scenario you can do this.....

[geoelectro]

The leaking cap issue causes damage to the circuit board. The material that leaks is corrosive to the traces. If you get a magnifier you may be able to spot some trace damage. Traces can be repaired or bypassed. A good cleaning with a solvent like acetone helps remove residual corrosive material.

geo

[jjsinaz]

Thanks Geo. I'll have to take a closer look at that

[jjsinaz]

Today I took a closer look at the HL-002 board. I did find a couple of bad solder joints and fixed a bad trace. All tested good continuity wise after I was done. Thought I might have gotten lucky but no dice. Still have the problem.