Skip to main content

Roland HS-80 SynthPlus 80 (Part 2 - Tact Switch Replacement)

It was time to change the tactile switches in my Roland HS-80. It wasn’t in terrible shape but a few of the numbers were getting a little unresponsive, like the button equivalent of a cashier at the corner store more interested in their phone than your purchase.

Looking around online, it was hard to find out just what tact switch was going to work. The HS-80 is the home version of the Alpha Juno 2, which uses two different kinds, one for the membrane buttons and another for the push buttons. But the HS-80 only has one kind—the push kind. So I cracked it open to see what I was working with.

The HS-80 uses the 5mm tact switches exclusively. This is the same switch in the Juno-106. As I’m also working on a 106 restoration, I bought a big bag of switches on Wish for like a dollar. It was my first time using Wish so I wasn’t expecting much, but they were the right size and ended up working beautifully. Very tight and responsive.

I undid all the screws and metal ground shields, disconnected the cables, and swapped out the switches. There are 32 of them so it’s no small job, but maybe not very much different from other 80s polysynths. Don’t forget to do the two on the bender board as well.

Since I had the thing open I figured I’d change the battery too. A quick test with the multimeter showed it was still at full power but better safe than sorry. Sometimes internal batteries are connected to the board via convenient and easy to reach solder pads, like the Poly-800 (assuming you have solder pads at all). Not the HS-80. The board has to come out to get at the solder points underneath. And that means the keyboard has to come out as well.

When changing internal batteries, I’ve read it’s best to clip off the legs first and then desolder. That way heat isn’t transferred to the battery and it won’t explode. You probably don’t want things exploding in your face, especially when you’re holding a hot metal rod. I was able to get the new battery in easily enough. Sometimes you have to get creative with the legs to make them fit the hole configuration. But this one was easy.

I took a break for lunch and when I came back I realized that I had boards and cables all over the house, with a very empty-looking synth sitting on the table. Thankfully I had taken lots of pictures with my phone, so I was able to get it back together without much trouble. I did swap two cables but I caught my mistake before I powered it on. (Once I managed to get the keyboard cables reversed so the low keys started at middle C. That was momentarily confusing.)

I turned it on and it was indeed working. Success. Because I changed the battery, I assumed that the RAM sounds would be gone, like with the JX-3P. I was planning to attempt a SYSEX dump via a MIDI handshake, something I was not looking forward to as I had never really had much luck with that. But to my delight, there were my presets, including my cosmic chorus pad Carl Sagan, and a manually entered What the.

It’s nice when everything works correctly. There’s nothing worse than mashing buttons to get a sound to appear when you’re in the heat of creation. Yes, spending half a day changing tact switches on an HS-80 isn’t as fun as making a new song, but it is necessary, and there’s something zen about the whole thing. There’s so much distraction in modern life that it’s nice to spend a few hours thinking about nothing other than the task at hand.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Roland HS-80 SynthPlus 80 (Alpha Juno 2)

Although I listened to industrial music all through high school, and loved groups like Front 242 and Skinny Puppy, my interest in electronic music really exploded when I discovered techno and rave in 1991. I loved the energy of it but mostly I loved the sounds. It was unabashedly synthy, and each song was seemingly built around one or two incredible sounds that just repeated. It was glorious. I loved all the hoovers, but especially the Dominator, so if you had put money down with a bookie in 1991 that I’d someday be the proud owner of an Alpha Juno synth then you’d be a winner today. Well, almost. Instead of buying a reasonably sized Alpha Juno or Alpha Juno 2, I had to go and get the HS-80 SynthPlus 80, the rather unwieldy and, it has to be said, ugly home version. Introduced in 1987, a year later than the original Alphas, this behemoth widened the case to include an amp and two speakers. Gone are the fetching membrane buttons, replaced with D-50-style black push-button jobbi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Korg Poly-800 (Moog Slayer Filter And Battery Mod)

I’m trying to improve my electronics skills. I thought modding might be the logical next step from changing internal batteries and swapping out tactile switches. I’d like to add MIDI to my Korg Poly-61 and maybe improve the MIDI on my Roland JX-3P. These mods require skills above and beyond what I have now, and I certainly don’t want to wreck them in the process, so when a cheap Poly-800 became available on Yahoo Auctions, I snapped it up in the hopes of trying the Moog Slayer Filter Mod. As anyone who’s looked at a Poly-800 knows, there are no knobs on the front panel, just a few buttons and a lot of teal. I couldn’t do much about the teal but I could add two knobs to bring direct control of the filter and cutoff parameters to the fore. Seeing as it’s a Poly-800, and they sell for around $100 in Japan, I wouldn’t be too disappointed if I killed it. I could always sell it for parts and get my money back anyway. Cosmetically, my new Poly-800 wasn’t in terrible shape. There was so...
Post a Comment
Read more

Yamaha PortaSound PSS-480

As I’ve said before , I’m not the biggest fan of FM synthesis. It’s not that I dislike it. I believe it has its uses, and there are some sounds it does better than anything else. But I never went through an FM phase like a lot of other people seem to have. I grew up in the ‘70s and ‘80s so I love analog synthesis. I consider a two-oscillator monosynth solo with plenty of portamento to be one of the finer things in life. Recently, I have come to appreciate what FM synthesis can do. And while I’m still not a huge fan of six-operator synths like the DX7, take me down to four and watch me come alive. My TX81Z can do things no analog synth can do, and while I didn’t have it for very long, the DX100 was more than capable when it came to bass. Solid, even. If four operators are better than six, imagine how good two operators must be. Sadly, this is not the case but two-op machines are capable of some pretty incredible sounds. From bells to falling cooking pan-like noise, it’s hard to b...
Post a Comment
Read more