My new EII, and a couple questions

[ahaigh01]

Hello all  Emulator users,

I signed up on this forum about 6 months ago when I starting thinking about buying an EII that a friend wanted to sell.  I put it off for a while even thought the price was very low, mainly because I was nervous about putting money into an old, hard to repair instrument.  Well, I finally went for it and brought the EII home yesterday.  This particular one is an EII+ with 2 floppy drives.  It’s fully functional and in beautiful condition.  I am the third owner now, and I feel fortunate that I know the history of this EII since the mid 80’s.  It was originally bought new by a successful producer/musician in my city, and I think I may have used it as a midi controller myself during a session I did in his studio back in 1989.  He kept it in his studio only, and sold it to a friend of mine around 12 years ago.  My friend used it a few times for some recordings and it’s been stored in his studio ever since.

Like I said I will probably live in fear that one day I will turn it one and it will be dead.  I know the power supplies are touchy on these things.  I noticed last night while running it that the instrument does give off a “vintage warm electronics smell” It’s certainly not a burning smell.  I hope that is normal for this instrument, given that it hasn’t been used much for 20 years.  Any opinions on that?

The serial # 1999
EII+
The model I can’t quite read due to a scuff mark, but it looks like 6X6X (X’s being scratched).  Can someone tell me what the model would be?  Thanks

Alan

[lubb]

Emulator II + with dual floppy Model # 6060.

[sfbaytech]

Alan,

Congrats on your new (old) EII+!

Pretty well every one that has come through here has suffered cold-solder joints around the output power connector pins (the heat from which also causes a problem with the connector that attaches to it). Also a lot of the time the towers with diodes on top are also cold-soldered where they attach to the circuit board. If you know someone that is good with a soldering iron then the power supply board can rapidly be flipped over and re-soldered. If left they start to arc and then to power supply is stressed which can lead to its demise, so I'm recommending this as a preventative step. You may be smelling this, you may just be smelling dust on hot components.

Have fun with your EII+!

Chris
www.thisoldsynth.com

[ahaigh01]

Thanks for the info, guys.

[esynthesist]

Hi Alan

Congratulations with your EII+.

Just for information: my two Emulators are "smelling vintage electronically" from the moment I bought them... which means they are smelling like this for more than three years.
It didn't cause any problem so far, although they both have the original PSU which have never been repaired, re-soldered or re-capped.
But I have to admit that the Emulator-IIs are the only instruments in my studio giving this "odour" - even the older Emulator-I is not smelling at all.
It has a quite practical side-effect though: since the LCD backlights of my Emulator-IIs are dead I can't actually *see* that my Emulator-IIs are still ON, but if I enter the studio at night I can immediately *smell* that I forgot to shut them down

[ahaigh01]

Ha, I kind of like the smell...  and yes, you walk into the room and know it's on.  It reminds me of when I had a Hammond B3.  That thing smelled great when running.

[Elmbeatz]

Great thread !! 

[ahaigh01]

The EII is running well so far.  I have a few new questions for you kind people:

1. The mod wheel is constantly putting out  cc values in the low range on the midi output.  Could the pot on the wheel be dirty or is there a way to calibratre it?  I seem to remember fixing a similar problem on my K2000 by tighting up a nut on the wheel (it was the pitch wheel in that case).

2.  Of course I would like to have an emuser and HxC, but I'm also considering a vintage Mac to run Sound Designer.  What is the most recommended Mac to get for SD?  Also, is there any real advantage to an old Mac with SD now that the emuser exists? 

3. I'm planning on doing a lot of sampling and maybe releasing some disks - What types of sounds are most EII users interested in?   I'm guessing synth sounds are always popular and I'm sure everyone has enough bread-and-butter instrument sounds already.....

4. My machine is an EII+.  I'm finding the 2nd memory bank is kind of a pain in the ass because half the time when I enter a "0" to change programs, it swaps to the other memory.  Maybe the button is double triggering, but it seems fine in every other case.  Anyone else have this?
Thanks

[ahaigh01]

So I got a nice Mac Classic off Ebay for $100 + shipping, in great condition.  4 meg of ram and 40 gid HD.  OS 6.07.  I managed to get SD onto it and built a cable.  Worked the first time!   !  Now I just have to learn to use SD better......