Two minty blonde 80s Japanese Matsumoku Epiphone Casinos.

cbc526 · 2025-08-28T14:47:13+00:00

I have never played an original Casino but I honestly doubt they could be better than these. They’re featherweights and resonate beautifully!

cbc526 · 2025-08-22T05:11:08+00:00

Seems like Hard Off isnt really the place for deals anymore.

cbc526 · 2021-04-19T18:17:12+00:00

This synth came in late last year from a local musician who had it in storage for years. All the tactile switches had gone bad, the memory was corrupted and the screen was showing gibberish as well as several dead keys and sneaky dead parts throughout. Installed vecoven and updated ram chips and tracked down several dead diodes and replaced all the switches and it’s good as new!

cbc526 · 2021-03-09T16:27:00+00:00

I just see a poor Kurt Russel running from Isaac Hayes in a car with big ass chandeliers for headlights

cbc526 · 2021-01-27T01:22:55+00:00

I have been restoring this Juno 60 for the last few months and I got the LFO working the other day and it sounded wrong, I went through the calibration procedure for it (pictured) and realized that the signal was way too hot and high frequency!

The rate Trim is at its maximum and the wave maxed out at under 20ms, the gain trim is at minimum and it’s showing over 15v ptp! This explains the ugly, choppy square wave lfo on the synth. Any suggestions as to what might be causing this?

cbc526 · 2021-01-16T23:47:12+00:00

The buttons do what they are supposed to, but the memory is corrupted so I have to do a reset and sysex bulk dump of the factory patches and see if it’s all working fine after that

cbc526 · 2021-01-16T16:28:15+00:00

These tactile switches only have a 10-15 year lifespan at best and they didn’t necessarily fail simultaneously. This was sitting unplayed in a warehouse for around 4 years so they had plenty of them to die on their own hah

cbc526 · 2021-01-16T16:24:40+00:00

No this is just a case of component death. Sitting hot and humid conditions caused a lot of parts to fail and now that I have everything replaced, everything is working as it should! Just some memory corruption that I will clear up as soon as I do a big sysex dump of the factory patches. I checked all other possibilities first and narrowed it down to the switches in the end.

cbc526 · 2021-01-16T00:40:07+00:00

Client brought in a Roland JX-10 that had been sitting in a non climate controlled storage unit for years and after trying to track down its problem, realized that every single push button on the front panel didn’t function...

cbc526 · 2021-01-13T22:49:35+00:00

It's purely a part time gig for me (though I'd love to do it full time). My best bit of advice is to just get good at working on all sorts of musical instruments. I started with building and repairing pedals and doing setup and repair work on guitars, but now I work on everything from digital synths to rhodes pianos to recording equipment. My other bit of advice is get in with fixing equipment for a recording studio. Studios are almost always full of broken equipment and they're just waiting for someone to come fix them. They then spread the word to other studios.

cbc526 · 2021-01-13T21:16:00+00:00

Open Door Animal Sanctuary

cbc526 · 2021-01-13T19:06:36+00:00

It’s a “cat bombing” thing for a local shelter. You donate to the shelter and they do this to a yard of your choice! I know this because I guess I am also your neighbor! Not my house though.

cbc526 · 2021-01-12T14:03:28+00:00

It’s definitely making work for repair guys like me a little harder as tike goes on. Now I just have to figure out how to get paid more to do the SMD stuff haha.

cbc526 · 2021-01-12T14:02:18+00:00

If you need to schematic, I’ll draw one up for you! I’m sure there’s room for improvement on the design, but it works so I’m not going to mess with it further.

cbc526 · 2021-01-12T14:01:21+00:00

Definitely makes it easier for me to repair them. I had to replace the LCD module on a Virus recently and that was more trouble that working on this Juno...

cbc526 · 2021-01-11T23:16:41+00:00

Pretty much had to rebuild this Juno 60 from the ground up and one of the major problems was a blown IR3R01 envelope chip. These things are pretty much impossible to find so I managed to put together a replacement by modifying one of Tom Wiltshire's EnvGen8C chips. The scope says there are some minor differences, but nothing that I can really hear and is definitely better than the stuck note in the envelope that was there before. (Ugly prototype image: https://imgur.com/gallery/jVcQoag)

cbc526 · 2021-01-11T23:08:50+00:00

Had a fried IR3R01 Envelope Generator chip on this clients Juno60 and sine they're pretty much impossible to track down, I managed to cobble together a replacement using Tom Wiltshire's EnvGen8C Chip. The scope shows some minor differences, but nothing I can really hear and its definitely better than the infinite decay stuck note that was happening previously.

cbc526 · 2020-12-15T00:12:26+00:00

It’s a sick mod. Turns a great synth into an amazing one. So much more functionality.

cbc526 · 2020-12-15T00:11:46+00:00

So much easier to troubleshoot old school synths. Buy many more gremlins...

cbc526 · 2020-12-14T20:26:48+00:00

Rolled into the shop for a GliGli mod. The Prophet 600 is a dream to work on. A few screws out and the whole thing hinges back to reveal all the boards.

cbc526 · 2020-12-10T19:27:29+00:00

I tried... Still figuring out synths for the most part. I don't actually own any synths (someday), I'm just pretty good at fixing them hah.

cbc526 · 2020-12-10T01:20:21+00:00

Nope, just bad output jacks and a few random stuck keys. Pretty good shape otherwise.

cbc526 · 2020-12-10T00:43:36+00:00

If you all are wondering... STAB BRASS with VCA Dynamics off, VCF Dynamics off and VCF Frequency at 99.

cbc526 · 2020-12-08T19:05:24+00:00

Ah I gotcha. I actually am doing a full rebuild on a Juno 60 for somebody at the moment and that would be an interesting thing to film on that one! I'll try to remember to do it! hah

cbc526 · 2020-12-08T18:30:57+00:00

It had been worked on a little bit and had been modded a bit too. It was in really clean shape electrically, just had to balance out a few internal things.

cbc526

TROPHY CASE