Emax II tech issues. Non serious.

[Bigmojo]

Hi,

I bought an Emax 2 the other day. a 2212 2 meg keyboard with a hard drive (a Conner)

The guy selling it had TONS of gear and didnt really seem to care about it that much. He just wanted the space so I happily relived him of it.

Anyhow. Couple of issues I've noticed.

1) Its out of tune believe it or not. Or should I say,m its transposed. I have to hold down transpose and hit G sharp to get it right.
2) The LCD backlight conked out. It was working, now it isnt.
3) Sometimes the hard drive moans its not an emax drive (I think this is bad sectors) Sometimes it works, sometimes not.  If it boots I can always get to it and load up some of the banks.
4) Output is a little quiet. Not really bad like Proud emax owners, but quiet. About hald the volume of my Ti. It sounds fantastic though. Just like my Emulator III.

Other than that it looks and sounds the business. And Im really pleased because I got it cheap.

Any idea what may be wrong. I can run a few of the emax II diagnostics test later but I suspect all is well in that regard.

The main bugbear is the LCD backlight.  FRom what I'vw managed to gather I dont need to replace the LCD but I might as well while its open.

[alphabyte]

Replacing the backlight is a very simple task compared to replacing the LCD. I wouldn't recommend replacing the LCD unless you have a proper desoldering tool to swap out the header that connects the LCD to the front panel board.

I would try the backlight first. You can find good deals on ebay from time to time for backlight sheets you can cut to size. I did this for my EIIIxp and it was a piece of cake. It will take longer to get the the LCD than it will to replace the backlight.

I have replaced the LCD in one of my Emax rack units with a VFD that is a direct drop in for the LCD requiring no backlight power. This, however, is a fairly involved process. While it does alleviate concerns about the backlight, it is a bit of a hack.

As for the tuning, is this definitely a global issue or could it be a case of the samples being setup in a non-standard tuning? You might try re-calibrating the controls. There might be something up with the pitch wheel, though I would expect a different transposition interval.

As for the low output, you might have a look at the headroom setting in the Master module. I usually have mine set between 5 and 10 dB. You can usually get away with less if you are not playing back dense patches or performances.

Also, as you likely know, the Emax II is unbalanced. The Virus is not and most definitely has a hotter output signal. Even if you digitally transferred a heavily limited sample that has been normalized into the Emax II, I wouldn't expect the output to compete with a Virus without some amplification.

Just some rough ideas. Hope I didn't sound to preachy. Just trying to share my experience. Best of luck and let us know what you find.

-trevor

[dr.c]

Power up your emax, play it. Detuned ?


Jiggle the tune wheel (on the left side), play, still out of tune ? In this case, an idiot changed the presets of the system and made new diskettes out of it !