Is there a doctor in the haus?
I’ve wanted one of these for a while, just because they’re kooky and a bit rare. They don’t show up on the auction here that often anymore, but when they do they’re usually around ¥10,000 ($100 to me). This one was listed as ‘junk’ and didn’t come with the special carrying case or anything, and as you’ll see in the next photo had a big battery leak corrosion problem so it was ¥5,000 including shipping. Yay!
Yeah so the right side there at the top was nasty. It ran off a wall wart but no go with batteries, and these use the batteries for memory retention so that right there was a problem. As this wasn’t a terminal soldered to the PCB I yanked it out and soaked it in vinegar for an hour.
Pretty grody. Yuck.
This is after a hour’s soak. I took it out then Q-tipped it. The reverse side was pretty nasty too, so I soaked it some more then took it out and swabbed the backside down, then headed to the superintendent’s room (I did this at work), borrowed a fine file and a wire brush and went at it. Here’s the result.
Not the best angle for a photo but it’s miles better than it was before. Put it all back together, plopped some batteries in and fired it up.
It’s alive! Battery corrosion is an easy thing to take care of, even if it means in extreme cases fabricating new metal terminals yourself. Luckily this time vinegar and elbow grease did the trick. Now it’s off to make some dirty 80’s Simmons wanna-be electronic funk.