First post, by Woolie Wool
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A couple weeks ago, during a Doom session, I started hearing a strange crackling from my Roland SC-88. Initially thinking it to be a problem with my DAC or the Toslink cable I was using, I fiddled with the cables of my audio setup several times before resuming. Then, in the middle of a fight, I heard incredibly loud digital crashing and grinding noises...and the music stopped. Ever since then the DAC has produced nothing but static crackling with the occasional burst of distorted music before going back to crackling again. I initially thought the analog board was at fault, disassembled the machine, and checked all the capacitors. They were perfect, and there were no signs of damage to the board. Furthermore, the SC-88 works fine as a preamp for an audio source and the diagnostic routines indicate errors in...the MIDI engine? Uh-oh.
So then I started googling people who had problems with their SC-88, and found this story. This guy's problem was on the digital board. It turns out a capacitor labeled C38 had blown, so I brought mine out to my workplace where the lights were much brighter at home, and conducted some exploratory surgery.
It's C38. The very same cap as that guy's problem. It blew and spewed a bit of cap juice. The capacitor C39 and the chip IC22 may have been contaminated by electrolyte and damaged, but it's hard for me to tell.
Pictures (click to embiggen):
Overview and analog board.
Digital board. Wait, what's that? Let's take a closer look.
C38 and electrolyte bukkake.
So now that I know what the problem is, what to do? I'm unfortunately not particularly great with my hands and have no soldering expertise. I do, however, have the machine itself, the service manual, records of all the diagnostics I ran, and someone else's example of how to fix this problem. Is there anyone here who might be able to point me towards someone who'd be willing to take on repairing this thing? I'd hate to throw it in the garbage and get a new one, even though it might cost me less in the end.
