The last time I had my poor, battered CZ-5000 open, I tried to change the signal relay, a small component usually found in consumer electronics to suppress the thump sound heard at power-on. These are known to go bad in the CZ range, and can apparently cause all kinds of interference in the audio signal, from distortion and pops to volume drops and more. My machine was experiencing all these things, including an excessive amount of noise when moving the chorus slider. The signal relay drop-in replacement that I bought on eBay didn’t work so I cleaned the old as well as I could, re-installed it, and declared it fixed. Well, that didn’t last long. I fired up the CZ-5000 recently to install some patches I found online and was disappointed to discover that my “fix” was no longer working, and all the horrible noise had come back. It was time to address this issue permanently. And, while the machine was open, I figured I may as well replace the old LCD screen, which had a column of bad
Even the most casual reader of this page will have realized that my tastes skew towards the analog. However, I’m not an analog purist. Like a chef, I prefer to have a variety of spices at hand with which to season my music. (Can you tell I just ate lunch?) So to that end I have a Yamaha TX81Z and Korg DW-8000 in my kitchen. Erm, studio. Add to that now a Kawai K1r. Actually this is the second K1r I’ve owned in my lifetime. The first one made a brief stop in my studio in the early 2000’s when I was searching for a new sound. I eventually settled on breaks made in the box but before jettisoning all my studio gear (yes, I do regret it) I remember managing to get not very much useful out of the K1r except some weird digital pitch-bent gurgles. So why did I buy another one? A couple of reasons. First, I want all the synths. Not very realistic but it’s true. Second, I used to own one and I’d like to get the old studio back together. Third, I had a Yamaha TG33 for awhile and I really li