Ensoniq SQ-80 Easy battery replacement using standard CR2032 coincell batteries
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- Опубліковано 26 жов 2020
- I decided to change the memory battery in my vintage 1987 Ensoniq SQ-80 synthesizer but instead of sourcing the expensive BR-2/3A 3V battery I used a simple cheap easily purchased CR2032 with a holder so it can be replaced far more easily in the future.
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Your alive. Great to see you 😊 hope you keeping well.
I KNOW! I was only just thinking about him yesterday. Really great material.
Oh thank god, he's alive :D
Or, he has learned how to post, FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE! Happy Halloween :)
These videos are such a delight!
Can we *please* crowd fund this man a load of money and broken synthesizers??? 🙏👍
Missing your synth video repairs Markus hoep all is good with you and fam.
Soooooo good to have you back on the road, Markus!! And thank GOD you look healthy. Such lovely a surprise finding out you'd just uploaded a new video!! 😄
Nice to see you back. Listened with headphones on iPad and the after touch is really clear. 👍
Wonderful repair. Glad you are back.
Good to see a notification for a new video from you. :)
Nice to see you again guy 👍
So glad you're back mate. Great to see the SQ-80! I have an ESQ-1, the older brother which sounds similar but sadly doesn't have the polyphonic aftertouch. All the same, they're great synths! Enjoy!
Good to see you again Markus!!!!!
Welcome back Markus-your fans have missed you 👍👍👍
Changing from those larger batteries to the smaller flat ones is almost mandatory in the vintage gaming/PC community. Just because of the damage that can be donne by the larger batteries. Great video as always, and that SQ-80 is such a underrated gem of a synth!
not true . These old batteries don't leak all. Mine is in there for 35 years and I am going to replace it with an original panasonic battery that will hold another 20 years. I don't want to open my esq1 very 6 months to replace batteries.
Those are typically big cadmium batteries that leak, not lithium ones
If you watch the video you will see that the battery is a Panasonic lithium BR 2/3 A 3V battery from 1987.
ua-cam.com/video/I3LJTsILbOo/v-deo.html
You can buy a battery holder for this type as an alternative.
Welcome back Markus. Glad to see you're doing well.
Great to have you back !
Great to see you back on UA-cam Markus.
Great to see you back Markus!
Great tip about the screwing back the screws.
Good to see you back with a synth vid
Great to see you are continuing your videos for us.👌
I'm glad i came across your video. i own an SQ80 that i bought brand new back in 1987. It was hardly used and it hasn't been used used in years. no doubt the battery's in need of replacement. I was thinking of buying a new keyboard, then remembered I have this stored away. I'll be saving a few hundred dollars if i can bring it back to life!
It is an excellent and user friendly keyboard to make musical arrangements. However if yours was stored away I hope you don't have problems when using it again. Mine was stored for 3-4 years in an attic and I had problems with some of the soundtracks (especially drum parts) that don't sound the same. IDK what happened. I have not opened it and it is stored again. Perhaps it is the battery, but I don't get the ''flashy''' signal.
great to to see a video at last wondered where you had got to nice little keyboard . .
Always have been curious about this synth, may still try to snag one eventually. Many thanks for the excellent informative vid as always 👍👍
Thanks Marshal. I have been watching your video’s . I love your synth collection.
Thanks. Missed your new videos✌
Ohh nice gear Markus 👍 , flashback´s from the 80's when I was a service engineer for Ensoniq in Sweden I had these SQ-80 and ESQ-1 and also Mirage on the bench. Nice to Se U again Cheers 👍😎
Thanks Peter
Good to see your still making videos Marcus. I've never heard of that keyboard technology I can't understand why more people don't use it.
Welcome Back Mark :-)
I just received my Ensoniq SQ-80 just today!! woohoo. Thanks for the video.
Love your videos Markus 👍
I just learned about "Polyphonic Aftertouch" - Thank you!!!
Welcome back! 😄🎉
Al fin un nuevo video! Gracias Markus 8)
Glad you are safe! You should use a small bit of PVC pipe or 3/8 diameter pipe coupler to make a little stand for that CR2032 battery holder. You could simply hot glue it to the metal RF shield. Then no worries at all about it flopping around.
I have a VFX SD that needs a new battery. I’m certain this video will be very helpful. Thanks!
Very cool to see how well built the ensoniq synths are!
they are nicely made. i wish they made a basic midi & usb keyboard with a few controllers for DAWs but with that polyphonic aftertouch
@@markusfuller Yeah, it's really clever mechanism! ASM Hydrasynth recently came out and is a poly aftertouch keyboard. I wonder how they went about it.
Robert Syrett I have the hydrasynth. maybe i should take a look one day.
@@markusfuller That would be a really interesting "tear down" video. You know, for science!
Hi Markus, good to you back. Missed your videos. Stay safe, regards Albert
thank you Albert
So good to finally find out why my ASR-10 also says "Tuning keyboard - Hands off!!!" Always though it had a bit of a bad day and was grumpy. ;-) Really like your videos, to the point and very informative. Keep it up!
Thank you
Yay 😃 a new video!!! Good to see ur videos again!! 🎹❤️👍
Nice to see you back :-)
It's good to have you back :)
Good to see you back Markus! I've got the same SQ80 and had to replace the battery a while ago. I elected to replace it with the same one (Panasonic BR2/3A) which lasted over 17 years! I don't think that a CR2032 will last that long given its capacity. But at least with your mod, it'll be very easy to replace. Thanks for sharing, and stay safe!
Thanks Alain. I am interested to see how long before the battery warning appears again. I’m guessing maybe 5 years ?. though I have seen these cr2032 in other keyboards that have lasted 10 or more years.
@@markusfuller
It should last quite a while. Probably close to 10 years or so. This keyboard is over 30 years old, and still works great. The onboard sequencer is a dream to use. That's the main reason why I keep it in my setup.
I've missed your videos!
Welcome back!
missed your videos, greetings from Brazil
Brill video and a welcome addition to the SQ80 stuff on YT
Another informative video. Thankyou very much👍
Welcome back 👍👍
Funny I was just thinking of doing exactly this to my sq80. Cheers from delaware Marcus :)
Thank you Ken. I enjoy watching your excellent video’s. Keep up the good work :-)
You have returned!
At long last!
The tip about the plastic threads is great...I'll remember that.
Perfect! I would use a few drops of silicon markus to keep the holder tight🙂 btw, nice job ☑👌🏻
Nice video, hope you and Jason are keeping well and safe :)
we are both well . thank you
Yay, Markus is back. Its been too long
7 Months Laaaaayter :) Welcome back
Sorry :-)
Excellent video as ever Markus. At least the old battery hadn't leaked, leaky batteries have been responsible for putting lots of these old keyboards (needlessly) into skips over the years
I have seen too many synths and drum machines killed beyond repair because of leaky batteries. I think these lithiums are pretty safe and it is not on the circuit board now.
I missed you!
Thank you very much, great video🎹✨
more teardowns please... but nice You are back!
Nice to see you back on UA-cam, mate!
Cheers
Daniel, host of Eat and Listen channel
Btw, awesome video as usual! Welcome back...
Cheers
Daniel, host of Eat and Listen channel
Thanks Daniel
Yay! he's back and with a nice synth that I also own. Now if you can come up with a way to "de-clack" those keys it would make a lot of people happy. Syntaur has a kit for it but it is never in stock.
It's a great keyboard mechanism otherwise, using induction instead of rubber membrane pads is a genius move.
Have you added the "hidden waves" ROM in there yet? they're not hidden waves as such just waves using the software code :)
I put some stips of felt in under them works ok... but not perfect
I have not looked into the hidden waves ?. the problem with some rubber is that it turns into gunk eventually so i dont know what would be a good de-clacker . something to look into Hmmm .
@@markusfuller You could also replace that old floppy an adapter to SD card or similar.
Dan Howard I think a company called GOTEK makes replaceable floppy drives that use USB sticks or SD cards. you can find them on ebay if you search for floppy disk replacement.
@@markusfuller Hi Markus. What about Memory Foam? That may have some longer life to it? Just an idea.
Super bueno ! i Now i can fix my SQ80 thanks to you :-)
Thanks for this video! Just got the message for the first time. Thinking of trying this repair myself, but a little scared. This video makes me feel a bit better though! cheers!\
Good Luck Ian.
Same here!
thank you for this video!
The SQ-80 is still my favourite synth (I have two of them - nice to play in overflow mode!) and it still has lots of fresh sounds. Try using the drum sounds with oscillator sync for complete weirdness..
Ok i will have a go at that. i really only used a few simple sounds and have not even had a play with the sequencer that much.
Super video
das ist wunderbar :D
Awesome! Thx
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oh your back, have been worried, ggod to see you :)
Ah, he's BAAACK! Another nice one. Reminds me of all the batteries I still have to check in my "fleet". I assume putting several in series woud work for higher voltages? Some of my old beasties use 4 penlight 1,5 volts if I remember correctly (Rhodes Chroma, Yamaha CS70M). And YES, poly aftertouch is very, very important to me as well. :-)
Hello Marc . yes placing them in series will give higher voltages. I still have one more keyboard to convert to a replaceable battery as it has a soldered in battery that is 19 years old now.
@@markusfuller I've got the same with a Wersi CX5 drumcomputer. That battery is from new as well, so about 40 years old (jikes!) although it might also just be a matter of using the thing more. It seems to keep its memory for a while after I use it so maybe it is actually a rechargable cell. Do you know via your Organaut experiences if Wersi used such cells? Furthermore leaking batteries that actually eat away the leads to the circuitry are a know Rhodes Chroma problem. The strange thing is that this actually seems to put the whole instrument software out of service which is a totally crazy design decision, malign one assume much more is wrong then there actually is. Ah well, at least the stuff does not drip on a board like on a Korg Polysix, etc. :-)
I disagree completely ... I think you are doing a marvelous job with taking these oldtimers apart ... shows they were only cooking with water too, at the time ... keep it up ...
Always interesting and fun to watch. Might have a go at replacing my M1 batterey now, what could possibly go wrong!
save your custom sounds and any settings first if you can maybe via sysex. the sq-80 was factory reset from its eeproms and never saved anything i had created.
@@markusfuller I wasn't to worried about saving anything as not used the M1 for a long time. Changed battery now display dead? Oppps!
Inverted- Popes is it dead or has it set the contrast to minimum ?. seen that before where i had to press the buttons in the right order without seeing a display just to get to bring up the contrast so i can see the display i cannot remember which keyboard that was on but it took several attempts.
@@markusfuller I will check that out. Thanks for advise.
Another option, would be to install one of those panel mount AA battery tube type holders. Of course it would entail finding a spot where it would fit and drilling a hole in the metal case. Kurzweil used this method on the K2500 rack. But today’s AA batteries seem to leak at will, so maybe the coin battery is the better choice.
I found the holders for the same battery that i took out of the sq-80 that looked like they would have fitted into the same solder holes and a battery without solder tags could be placed in there though that would have costs almost £25 and i had already filmed everything with the cr2032 holder and battery costing under £1. If it was a fix for someone else i would have used the correct replacement but this sq-80 is one of my own keyboards.
Done a similar job to replace the battery of a Yamaha QY-20 with way less space in the whole thing :D (Also had to do more work as SMD electrolytic caps are nasty and need to be banished from early 90s product. The original battery had already been replaced, but the people who been in before did a really poor job, the board was in a nasty state :/)
yikes i had a qy20. theres hardly any room in there.
I have the same missing screw! Same position.
maybe they were saving money :-)
I found a DX7 MKII on a junk pile and the only things wrong with it were a few sticky keys and a dead battery.
I then modded it, replaced LCD with B&W backlit display, added the chips for the floppy drive, updated the firmware EPROM, and installed a gotek floppy USB adapter with the flash floppy firmware.
Have you tried any FDD to USB adapters on any keyboards ?
Markusfeller I was wondering if it is possible that a battery of SQ-80 needs to be changed if I don't get the ''flashy'' signal. Mine was stored in an attic for around 4 years and some of the sounds have changed! Not all, some, I noticed some percussion sounds in particular. Most of the strings or piano are OK but some of the sounds are different. IDK what could have caused this. Some on the floppy disk, but some on the cartridge and some internal sounds are different.
Felice di rivederti
Have you replaced the capacitors on the power supply? I just replaced the battery in my ESQ-1 and was considering doing the power supply. I'm not very experienced with electronics, but I like getting my hands dirty. I just always worry that one day one of my old synths is going to pop when I turn it on and damage it's internals. So I want to make sure I'm caring for them. Thanks for your videos.
Hello, I did have a quick visual look at the caps but as they did not look like they had bulge or any leak evidence I did not really even think that they need replacing. the power supplies on these sq-80’s are well built with lots of protection on them. my motto is if it is working and does not look like anything is burning or bulging then I dont replace it. I have old radios here that are older than me and they work fine and still have original capacitors over 50 years old. though i know some people have been unlucky and caps have died and killed their vintage gear but I can honestly say with the vintage gear i have owned I have never had that problem. just lucky I guess.
With the CR2032 battery just providing 3v to keep the memory saves intact, they can last 10 years before needing a change.
Except when you buy 8 of them for £1 at Poundland
I’ve very commonly seen those old 2032 batteries still working fine in units from the mid to late 1980s. They last a remarkably long time.
@@alphabeets But they weren't bought from Poundland !
@@Bob_Burton Those Kodak Xtralife batteries from poundland are very good batteries. I've got some powering Gameboy carts and various motherboards requiring a 2032 as the CMOS battery and some of them are still going strong 4-5 years later. The batteries in poundland that are rubbish are the Zinc batteries, which leak for fun.
These batteries cost next to nothing to make these days. Their alkaline batteries are among the best value you can get too. They piss all over the big brand names like Duracell and Energizer.
Great synth. I have many Ensoniq synths , including an ESQ1 that I bought new bach in '86 . Sorry , but I don't see the point in replacing the Panasonic Br2/3 with a cr2032 . The price of the original is just the same as a duracell 2032 + holder. You can easily snip the old leads from the top and leave the leads to solder the new leads of the BR2/3 to the old ones. Job done, very secure ( without dangling battery holder) and you won't have to open the Synth again in your lifetime to change batteries.
Surprised you didn't 3D print some sort of mounting thing for the battery holder.
I could have done something like that but I wanted to keep it as simple as possible.
Hi Markus. I was wondering if the battery replacement with the button batteries would be safe to stick inside an Ensoniq ESQ1 (the type with the heavy metal frame). I ask because I saw a video where someone added a battery compartment to the keyboard, and various comments referred to it being very unwise (mind you it was using AA batteries in a compartment). Your thoughts would be very much appreciated.
Hello. I think it sould be fine to put something like a lithium cr2032 inside as long as its in a holder but i would not recommend normal AA batteries as they can leak alkaline when they run flat and that destroys copper circuit boards (depending on the chemistry of the battery of course if its an alkaline battery) I used the lithium cr2032 because they very rarely have any leakage problems. the holders can be found reasonably priced on places like amazon.
@@markusfuller Hi Markus, your quick reply was gratefully received. I really like the way you do your 'How to do it' vids, very clear and well presented. Thanks
Hey Markus I was wondering if you may be able or willing to do a teardown of the Elektron Octatrack? Hope your doing well, thanks for your great channel!
Hello I only take apart things tgat I own and I do not have the Octatrack. sorry about that. best wishes markus.
@@markusfuller I appreciate the reply, I figured unless you either had a friend or some other access to one that you couldn't but I've been curious since I've got one to see what it looks like. Take care and love the content you do share, thanks again!
Mine still has the original battery from '89 and it's been throwing up "SYSTEM ERROR 03", addition to the voltage low message 😞.
I'm a little late to the party, but why would that be an "unprofessional" job?
This new stuff is made to fail, so this repair is the best you can do. It's even better for someone else to do it that way because replacing the battery now is super simple.
Would a holder for the 2/3 with battery fit under the metal plate?
yes there is plenty of room for the holder. I just did not have one here so i used what i already had.
Ahh polyphonic aftertouch, if only I had such a keyboard, oh wait my GEM/Generalmusic S2 has such a feature and it's supposedly better to use than the ensoniq implementation using a custom strip of FSR's under the standard top of the range FATAR keybed. It also has FATAR's "dog leg" sprung contacts which use a long metal "spring" (like wire wound guitar strings without the inner) which moves between two bus bars that run along the back of the keybed.
The display is a large blue EL backlit display which despite the age of the keyboard is still perfect and the whole synth is covered in a nice rubberised coating which somehow does not go sticky like other coatings. A nice range of synth patches as well, more than likely due to the fact that it was supposedly an ELKA (of synthex fame) project (the keybed probably being related to the ones in their MIDI controllers which also had poly-AT) which generalmusic continued when they brought ELKA.
As for using it as a MIDI controller it's excellent. It has up to 16 zones that can be any combination of internal sounds, MIDI or sequencer, 7 configurable sliders and buttons, two full sets of separate MIDI I/O and each "track" can have a different MIDI channel/port for in and out (so by disabling that tracks internal sound generation and input from the keyboard it can be used to reassign MIDI channels) . Plus it has release velocity as well, something some patches use to good effect and a built in midi filter.
On the earlier non turbo S2/3 the internal battery is of no great importance as it only keeps the clock running (which can go up to todays date if it was set within it's allowed adjustment rage) and all saving/loading is to disk, the disks not only being for patches and sequences but for effects (i believe) and custom user programs (inc. the GEM disk needed to import wav samples). Later S2/3 Turbo models (and the S2r rack) do have a rechargeable internal battery for patch saving and battery backed sample RAM and do leak, and do destroy PCB's in the process, something very undesirable as parts are near unobtanium, esp. as there are some custom ASIC's in there.
Unfortunately despite how nice the S Series are they didn't sell very well, partially due to the fact that like Technics and the WSA1 they were seen as makers of home keyboards/organs so could never make a professional workstation, and the fact that due to the way samples are played back on non-turbo models there is only 16 voices of polyphony available, it does mean all sounds can be detuned so any synth patches can have oscillator detune adjusted.
www.muzines.co.uk/articles/gem-s2/1172
I had the gem ws2 keyboard many years ago, It never had the features yours has but i liked it just for its built in speakers and simplicity where i could just turn it on and work out a tune without having to switch on mixers and powered speakers and get distracted in making synth sounds. I had that keyboard for many years.
@@markusfuller Generalmusic really seemed to try to throw the kitchen sink at things to try and tempt people away from the usual suspects, even there "entertainer" keyboards had full sound editing capabilities, plus they were first with using samples and modelling in the real piano series and Promega, Rick Wakeman loved his Promega 3 but unfortunately it broken and there is no one to fix it.
Recently got an old laptop so I can write disks for the S2 and becomes quite interesting when combined with the S Series disk library available online (although some disks only work on the turbo models), GEM keyboards use 1.6Mb formatted floppies so unlike some old hardware (like the Roland S50/550/330 samplers a USB FDD cannot be used to write disk images.
Also forgot to mention that the filters (there are two per sound) are supposedly based on the ones in the Synthex (not surprising given it's Elka heritage) and sound pretty good!
Is there modern synthesizer or MIDI keyboard with polyphonic aftertouch? Except Roli Seaboard... I use virtual keyboard iPad app that actually sends poly-after via Roland UM-ONE into Roland JV-2080 not the best solution but at least I can experience poly-after in some way... Amazing video! Thank You! ;)
The ASM Hydrasynth!
Yes as gazzar67 rightly says. the ASM Hydrasynth is an amazingly good polyphonic aftertouch synth.
Thank you! ;)
Is there a floppy replacement available for that, that uses SD cards? I know it wouldn't be stock but it would be an upgrade.
yes you can use one made by Gotek that will replace the floppy drive. I think you can use them for most vintage synths.
So has it needed changing yet?
You can do the same trick for a Tr707
Has the battery died on you yet/if so how long did you get out of it before that happened vs original?
the battery has not died and should last about 10 years.
Can't beat poundland for batteries.
Nice to see you back too :)
No screwdriver time..?
I need a battery for my SQ80. Please do you know the best place to get one?
I think you could try ebay and search for sq80 replacement battery.
So why didn't it lose its memory when you removed the old battery?
One way to keep that from happening (if it does happen) in the future would be two put two of those new batteries in parallel. They would last longer, and then when it came time to replace them, if you did one at a time you'd still have voltage present to keep the memory.
He got lucky. There must a capacitor in there that held the charge long enough to get the swap done. ...or he tricked us!
thats the factory reset sounds that it loads up from the 2 eeproms which do not rely on a battery to hold its memory. if i made my own sounds and named them they seem to disappear and the same 40 factory sounds were loaded up again.
I had a key pop up on my ESQ-1. What can I do to fix it? A new replacement key looks identical. Did my small spring stretch out?
Hello normally these keys have a small piece of its plastic underneath that is a kind of a hook that stops them at a certain height. if that tiny piece of plastic is broken off or not quite catching on the metal then it will lift higher than the next key. look at the key next to it and check how it is locked into place. good luck I hope you get it fixed.
@@markusfuller Sorry this is for an ESQ-1. Im not sure if something has broken on the key chassis or what unfortunately.
Also, do you have a video for improving the key action on the sq-80?
@@anonymous_friend Sorry I have no more videos on the SQ-80 as I sold the keyboard regrettably.
I wish I could find a battery holder for CR2032 that will fit in the typical three pin CR2032 location, so I could replace soldered in CR2032's with holders. But I've looked and looked, and nothing, only two-pin CR2032 holders, which won't fit.
I suppose you could 3d print one and use the contacts from a 2032 holder.
Hi Lennart I have had the same problem in the past and just could not find them.
@@markusfuller Well, I'm glad it's just not me.
This man was hiding in those synths since the lockdown. He was very very afraid to come out in the open.
Now he out... maybe he can tell us what he’s been up to and hiding in those transistors. Lol🤣🤣🤣
I have been doing all those thing I would never normally do like gardening building a fish pond and queing at supermarkets. but not a lot of electronics sadly.