Martin Hoewner and Heinz Weierhorst, technicians from Bochum (northern Germany),  offer visionary solutions for specific problems with vintage analog synthesizers. One such weak point is the power supply unit. They have specially recreated a new PSU for Roland Jupiter-8, Elka Synthex, Moog Memorymoog and Sequential Prophet-5.

Let’s let them speak for themselves:

“The Jupiter-8 tends to run hot. And there’s a lot of background noise in the Memorymoog and the Synthex, caused by the internal fan. Further, the Prophet-5 PSU tends to buzz. We set out to eliminate these three things. The result is a new PSU – which lengthens the life of the instruments and saves electricity as well.

Four Jupiter-8 in a row. Number 1, 2 and 4 have the new PSU installed. Photo (c) Synthtaste

To the high temperatures: these cause electronic components to age prematurely. So an improvement here means prolonging your instrument’s life.

Another problem is abration of the PSU cables due to mechanical wear caused by frequent opening and shutting of the instruments. This can even cause a blown fuse, which may ruin your beloved synthesizer. A problem we were able to solve, too.

There are no more fan noises and no more electric buzzing because our PSU doesn’t heat up und thus doesn’t need any cooling.

Power consumption may not be something that worries you a lot, but it’s still something to think about. We were able to reduce this considerably. The Memorymoog gives us a great chance to demonstrate this: it now needs 48 instead of the original 118 Watt. The picture below shows the Jupiter-8 …

Jupiter-8 power consumption. Original PSU (left) and new PSU (right). Photo (c) Synthtaste

A pleasant side effect of all of this, is that there is additional room in the synthesizers now for further upgrades. Space for our velocity- and aftertouch modification by means of a velocity sensitive keyboard, for example. A nice upgrade that’s also in our program.”

For further infos see: http://www.synthtaste.de

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GreatSynthesizers has checked out the advantages of the new PSU with the Elka Synthex. The modified instrument now weighs a few kilos less (still heavy enough, no question about that) and it has a new power supply unit (PSU) that doesn’t require that original, noisy fan. The synthesizer remains absolutely quiet. So there’s nothing more between you and the superiour tone quality of the Synthex. Recommendable.

Elka Synthex with new PSU - and without fan. Photo (c) GreatSynthesizers