- Joined
- Sep 28, 2012
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My Novation Supernova, a unique-sounding and getting-pretty-rare hardware synth, died. Total croak. Wouldn't progress beyond the boot screen, just kept flashing the OS version at me and making various blinky red lights on the front go crazy. Dang.
So I consult The Oracle. Lots of users have had this problem, and they all had a different fix. The power supply is dead. The main chip is toast. There's a cable inside - flat ribbon, power cable, something - that sucked and Novation used to hand out replacements for free. Hmmmm.
First I reset the unit and reload the OS. No dice.
Next I call Novation USA. Nice guys, but this synth is way old and they have no spares for any part of it laying around any more. I can Ship It To Mississippi (might be a song title in that), pay shipping both ways and $60 an hour plus parts to get it looked at. Yikes. It'll cost more to get it diagnosed than it's worth on the open market.
I told the guy, no thanks, before I do that, I'm going to crack it open and DeOxIt. Which I just did... pulled every cable inside, sprayed the contacts and the plugs, plugged it all back in.
It booted right up. It took 15 minutes from unracking to re-racking and what I'd guess is about 10 cents worth of D5.
Caig rocks the universe. If you don't have a can of DeOxIt D5 within two or three steps of your mix chair, what the hell are you waiting for?
So I consult The Oracle. Lots of users have had this problem, and they all had a different fix. The power supply is dead. The main chip is toast. There's a cable inside - flat ribbon, power cable, something - that sucked and Novation used to hand out replacements for free. Hmmmm.
First I reset the unit and reload the OS. No dice.
Next I call Novation USA. Nice guys, but this synth is way old and they have no spares for any part of it laying around any more. I can Ship It To Mississippi (might be a song title in that), pay shipping both ways and $60 an hour plus parts to get it looked at. Yikes. It'll cost more to get it diagnosed than it's worth on the open market.
I told the guy, no thanks, before I do that, I'm going to crack it open and DeOxIt. Which I just did... pulled every cable inside, sprayed the contacts and the plugs, plugged it all back in.
It booted right up. It took 15 minutes from unracking to re-racking and what I'd guess is about 10 cents worth of D5.
Caig rocks the universe. If you don't have a can of DeOxIt D5 within two or three steps of your mix chair, what the hell are you waiting for?
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