Volca FM LED Makeover
Right. I can’t leave stuff alone. We know this. So it only took maybe three days for me to decide that green LEDs would look better on the Volca FM than the red ones Korg went with. I mean, c’mon, the soft buttons and even the sliders are green already for fuck’s sake, and it’s a nice homage to the DX synths, but why stop there? Green. LEDs. Yes. Must. Have. Now.
I knew it was gonna be SMD LEDs from the get go. There’s no way there’d be room for through-hole LEDs (or anything else really, aside from the pots & encoders and yeah ok the MIDI and power and sync and audio jacks but goddammit you know what I mean). These fucking things are goddam small as fuck. I used to be scared shitless of SMD components too, but now not so much. Anyway it didn’t take long to desolder and remove the factory LEDs.
That right there is a Jen-you-wine High Tech SMD LED Pusher Outer. See, the way Korg designed this PCB has the LEDs fit snugly into 2mm holes in the PCB, with the solder pads on the underside of said PCB, which I guess makes sense as the top side has the “keyboard” contact pad section immediately above. I got a bit impatient though while removing the LEDs and pulled one of the solder pads up off the PCB but caught it just in time to keep the pad from separating from the hair-thin trace. Miracles DO happen after all I guess. Next it was off to Osaka to buy green SMD LEDs. They were ¥5 a piece but you have to buy them in lots of ten. Yay I’m out a buck. Cheap! But after you factor in train and subway fare it’s more like ten bucks. Whatever. Ok, after that was all said and done it was time to solder in the green LEDs. Hmmmm. They don’t seem to wanna fit in the holes. What gives? Time to break out the vernier calipers. Hmmmmm. Time to look at the datasheet on these green LEDs. Goddam. 1.9mm. Tight fight. There’s also a +/- 0.2mm margin for error so that doesn’t help. The factory LEDs are just a fucking smidge smaller, but still a 3216 SMD package. Well. No going back now. ONWARDS!!!
Yay. All soldered in. Test time. Yay, three of then aren’t lighting up. AAAAARGH. Remember when I said the new LEDs were a teeny bit larger than the from-the-factory ones? Evidently I crushed the lens of one fitting it in the hole and that caused ground problems for an adjacent LED, while the third one came on after a reflow of solder. There was much cursing, frustration, and gnashing of teeth. In the end, I managed to get them all working, but I’m not sure they’ll stay that way. I may do some parts hunting to see if a smaller (!!!) SMD green LED is available and then replace the lot. Here’s what it looks like now:
Way more in line with my personal vision of something that just screams out I AM AN FM SYNTH, MOTHERFUCKER!!!!! Notice I changed out the Play button LED to green as well. Yeah much better. I was thinking next I might go with blue LEDs on the Volca Modular. Who knows!?
