I’ve had the MF-104z for a little less than a year now. It’s been working great all this time.
Just today I noticed it’s acting a little strange. For one the echo volume seems to be much lower than usual (even with drive + output volume nearly maxed). The strangest thing is that the feedback knob seems to have lost its effect. Going from fully counter-clockwise to fully clockwise has barely any audible difference. Usually at around “8” the echo would have positive gain and start looping endlessly, but now with the feedback all the way up to 10 I hear maybe 3 or 4 echos that quickly diminish into silence.
Here are the settings it’s on right now, just in case:
Delay Time: 12 o’clock
Short/Long switch: Long
Mix: 5
Feedback: 10
Int/Ext switch: Int
Loop gain: 0 (shouldn’t matter in this case)
I’ve only connected audio IN and audio OUT , all other jacks, including CV are empty.
The only thing I’ve changed in the past few weeks is:
The moogerfooger is now in a rackmount kit with the jacks facing the ceiling (maybe dust fell in?)
I’ve had cables stay in the audio in and audio out jacks for a few days straight (nothing in the CV jacks though)
Did anyone ever experience this? Does anyone know a reason why this might be happening? Do I need to get it serviced or is there something simple I can check?
The problem is that thread is about 5 years old and a lot of the pictures in it are missing. Does anyone have a more updated and accurate description of how to fix this issue? Apparently it’s something to do with pins hitting the case, but I’m not 100% sure.
Sounds like it: try isolating the pins with hot melt glue or rubber cement (or tape). I think you take the right-hand (facing the front of the unit) wooden side off.
Take the right side panel off,
Push the daughter board back down
Place some fish paper between the daughter board and the front face plate.
You are good to go.
I don’t really believe that in THE fix for the problem. There is something else wrong with the 104z that causes intermittant failures. I’ve sent mine back to the factory twice due to a very low output.
WHen I would have a problem, it would have a faint echo, with 4 echoes at the most, no matter what the input signals, drive, gain, output, feedback levels were.
Protection diodes have been installed in mine, so there is some kind of voltage spike causing an output resistor to blow.
Is the daughter board hot glued to the mother board on everyones?
I removed the pedal off the rack kit and removed the right wood panel to look inside. I couldn’t find this mysterious pin that supposedly touches the case. The only lone pin I saw had quite a bit of clear space between it and the case. Anyways I screwed the wood back on and tried it again and now it works fine. Not sure if it was just due to unplugging and plugging the power back or maybe when it was mounted on the rack it something was causing weird behavior.
Anyways I’m going to use it off the rack kit for now. I’ll see if the problem comes back.
WHen I had this problem, it was remedied by unplugging the power supply and plugging it back in. This is temporary. You should contact Moog ASAP.
It might work for a month, it might mess up later on today. The thing is, it is an intermittant problem. They fixed mine I had to send it back 6 months later.
Let them know about it now while it may still be covered under warranty.