Fresh board member with repeatedly broken XL

Tips and techniques for Minimoog Analog Synthesizers
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Vintage_Boris
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Joined: Mon Dec 08, 2014 2:05 pm

Fresh board member with repeatedly broken XL

Post by Vintage_Boris » Mon Dec 08, 2014 2:37 pm

Hi to all

After a few years of read-only I've decided to register and contribute to this forum. My name is Boris, I am from Switzerland, a musician who had started playing before the CD was there... Oh but, yes...we had Vinyl, and the Mini just came out...

Anyways, I couldn't afford a Moog then, so the late revenge (naw..satisfaction) came with one Voyager Performer, then one XL and lastly (not to be that old-schoolish) a Little Phatty... Sadly, the XL, which I felt about being the peak of Analogue Himalaya...has developed to a wheel-chair alpinist... It started this year with an out-of-nowhere behaviour: suddenly every patch had some noise assigned, whether originally programmed, or not. The noise-switch was allways on, only the pot worked. So, I brought the XL to the official Moog service in Zurich (very nice people there) and the knowledgeable tech-guy found the faulty bug and replaced it. So far ok. Six months later (today), I noticed that VCO1 and VCO2 didn't sound anymore. I checked thoroughly the possible handling errors, but at the end it was clear: 2 oscillators dead. I will bring the machine to the service next week to face probably some more expensive repair than the first one. Looks like the analog board should be replaced. Of course, the warranty has expired...

What to say? I was happy about the Voyagers and the whole new line of Moogs - in my opinion, better to deal with newer technology than with 40 years old electronics (referring to Mini etc.). But now, I am not that sure anymore... Although the Voyager Performer still does well...I think I will conserve that one))))

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kamilof
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Re: Fresh board member with repeatedly broken XL

Post by kamilof » Tue Dec 09, 2014 11:47 am

My experience with MOOG tech support has been very good, obviously I prefer not to ever have faulty equipment :roll:

Coincidentally yesterday afternoon I bought a brand new Voyager XL and when I took it home I realized it has a dead key (F3). This morning I engaged MOOG tech support (still waiting for a response).

Hope I can just replace the 61 keyboard, everything else on the XL so far is working 100%.
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thealien666
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Re: Fresh board member with repeatedly broken XL

Post by thealien666 » Tue Dec 09, 2014 3:43 pm

About Moog Music Voyager failures: it is a fact that the main analog board inside any Voyager model has over 800 parts, and many of them are ICs. And that, statistically, the more chips you have the more chances that one of them will fail eventually. In a Minimoog D (the most common version) there was only 10 such chips, the rest were discrete transistors.

I've always been astonished at the complexity of that Voyager main board. Many pcb layers, convoluted traces routing, last minute add-on parts soldered by hand to iron-out some bugs. No wonder it fails.

But, as long as it's under warranty, it's an annoyance. But outside that warranty it becomes a costly nuisance. I feel for anyone who has a Voyager fail on them, I've had my Old School model out for repairs a couple of times (first time wasn't fixed properly). Once it was working again, I sold it to get a Minimoog D, which I'm thoroughly convinced will never fail (it hasn't in close to 40 years of existence).

But as for Kamilof's brand new Voyager XL which has a dead F3 key, that inexcusable. You'd think Moog music would perform a better overall functionality test before shipping such an expensive instrument ?
did you buy it directly from Moog Music or in a store ? If in a store, then maybe that store is doing what many other are doing and selling demo (faulty) units as brand new ?
Moog Minimoog D (1975)
DSI OB6
DSI Prophet REV2
Oberheim Matrix-6
Ensoniq SQ-80
Korg DW8000
Behringer DeepMind 12
Alesis Ion

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kamilof
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Re: Fresh board member with repeatedly broken XL

Post by kamilof » Tue Dec 09, 2014 3:57 pm

Bought the XL brand new at a MOOG dealer in NYC. Think the keyboard MOOG uses are actually manufactured by FATAR... perhaps the F3 key was faulty when it left FATAR factory. Either way the dealer offered me to exchange the XL with another brand new XL.

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thealien666
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Re: Fresh board member with repeatedly broken XL

Post by thealien666 » Tue Dec 09, 2014 4:24 pm

That's the very least they could do...

Defective Fatar keybed or not, Moog Music should have tested it completely before using it and shipping the XL with it.

Hope your replacement XL is flawless, as it should !
Moog Minimoog D (1975)
DSI OB6
DSI Prophet REV2
Oberheim Matrix-6
Ensoniq SQ-80
Korg DW8000
Behringer DeepMind 12
Alesis Ion

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kamilof
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Location: Brooklyn,NY
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Re: Fresh board member with repeatedly broken XL

Post by kamilof » Tue Dec 09, 2014 10:28 pm

thealien666 wrote:Hope your replacement XL is flawless, as it should !
Thanks! Today I went back to the dealer (ARMEN'S in midtown Manhattan) and exchanged the defective XL for a brand new one. So far the new XL is working 100% (including the F3 key). Got to admit that the whole concept of "patches" makes sense now: having a blast with expression pedal and various patch cables on the XL :D

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