Yellow Bench Repairs

The Oberheim OB-Xa might just be my favorite sounding synth ever made. The 4-pole filter sounds absolutely massive, even when compared to other Oberheim from this era. This one’s gotten a pretty thorough overhaul, including:
- Rebuilt PSU
- Recapped voice cards and upgraded multiturn trim pots
- New key bushings
- Cleaned key contacts
- Cleaned all control pots
- New memory battery
- Full factory tune

The legend. It’s always such a treat to get to work on an 808. They’ve been sampled so many times, but the tone and workflow of the real deal is pretty tough to emulate.

This one got new start/stop and tap switches, a non-corroded battery pack, replacement FETs for the muting/reset circuit, a deep clean and a factory tune.

#808

Had a couple Crumars come across the bench recently. The Performer had an issue on the keying and octave divider circuits that was causing multiple notes to sound, and the Bit-01 had a nasty crackle. Both were fixed by reflowing a whole bunch of solder joints.

Got a real cool one: the Maxi-Kong 800dv. A monophonic/duophonic synth that has all sorts of unique noises and strange ways to make them.

Gave it a deep clean and fixed a constantly rising oscillator.