“This keyboard is not far from total restoration at a minimum of cost. I got this from a guy in the early 90s after mine died. But by this time, we were all getting into the latest breakthrough…recording with DAWs (however primitive) with ‘unlimited’ tracks vs. 8. And this ESQ faded away. I don’t recall using it that much. But that’s how I got it.
ABOUT A YEAR AGO: I wanted to get it cleaned up and functioning again, so I took it to my 40-year-long-repair man….who is quite elderly now. He suffered a heart condition while he had it and never got around to fixing it. Many months later, when I picked it up, I did not realize most of the screws were not replaced. So I had to deal with that issue today, when posting. (See below for those kinds of details). I know there are several things wrong with this device, so I’ll walk you through everything you need to know:
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:
1. UNIT POWERS ON, and basically ALL* of the buttons function as expected. Pictures show various sections of this instrument selected so you can see this. (See #4 for *—one button may not be working)
2. There is no audio coming out of the L/R output jacks at this time…though I never remembered that being an issue, so something could be lose, or upon being moved around a few times over the past 30 years, simply maybe have broken something.
3. This sequences had the expansion memory card installed, which alone, was worth $, and some folks still look for those today!
That was installing hardware, which was very reliable. I can’t vouch for the condition of the card, but I would assume it works.
4. * The CARTRIDGE section (or the cartridge button, or the cartridge itself?) is not reading the cartridge that you see inserted in the pics. I would assume that after all these years, that cartridge may be bad. But if that were true, I remember (?) that the ESQ would at least ‘see’ the cartridge and give an error message, etc. So I’m assuming the problem could be that section of the circuit board also. Or the BUTTON that selects the cartridge is not doing it’s job. That would be the easiest, cheapest fix. But I don’t know what’s causing this.
5. In one picture you can see some pink substance on the black output/foot-pedal jacks. This was always on there when I got it, and I have no clue as to what it is or why someone put that on there, but it never affected anything when I played the instrument…it was just fine.
6. In order to ship the keyboard and not have movement of the actual physical keyboard section itself, you can see in two pictures that I stuffed plastic bags in there to safely wedge the keyboard so it would not move. I have no screw to replace the ones that were missing when I picked up the instrument from the repair shop.
7. You will see that there are approximately 3-4 yellowish keys on the lower left hand side of the keyboard. I had these replaced a long time ago, and the guy had no matches, so we used 3 keys off of some other ensoniq product/compatible product and those keys were different color-wise… but I didn’t mind that, so notice the three off white keys.
8. The memory back up battery is low. These are extremely cheap and available.
THIS IS FOR SOMEONE WHO WOULD LIKE TO FIX IT UP,
or knows how to themselves; or for someone who wants to part it out.
But like I said, I think this unit is not far from workable restoration, but I’m not a repair guy. I say this because it was working fine at one point, and it seems to me like the odd things that go out here and there are normal things that also went out when they were brand new and taking them to the repair shop.”
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