The upper keyboard restoration is finished. But I seem to be missing voices...
Looking into it... I think there's something wrong with the right panel were you can config the upper and lower string ensemble.

3 missing plastics

I found the 3 Missing plastics from my upper keyboard ! This weekend I will probably finish the whole keyparts restoration :-) .

After that I will probably start having a look at the speaker cables (all connected in series to that headphone jack).

While my plastic caps were missing I already had a look at the bass pedals. all the pins are rusty, so I sprayed some WD40 on them a couple of times already... I won't need the DREMEL to clean em, WD40 rules !!

eminente310.blogspot.com is coming along quite well with his ADD-ON PCB for the eminent, he's waiting for the PCB right now and will start tests soon !

upper keyboard layer

my cat played with 3 of my upper keyboard layer plastic caps where those copper feathers go in... will have to search my whole house :p , should have stored them in a box...

So it's finished besides those last 3 notes...

Yesterday I desoldered +150 copper springs from the upper keyboard layer...
It took me 2 hours, but with some Vangelis music time passed very quickly.

Someone advised me to replace the caps of my power supply, and I also noticed my transfo is not in the best shape, it's all rusty and I'm a bit afraid it could short circuit in the future... I was also thinking about replacing it with a thoroid transfo instead of the classic metal plate design. A thoroid gives less flux and therefore less interference with surrounding components. The eminent has a lot of white noise, so it's worth a shot.


A fellow eminent owner created a blog, he will try to :
- separate the keyboard layers
- create some form of amplitude control over the sustain section

http://eminente310.blogspot.com

Pictures concerning cleaning and repairing of the tabs

I cleaned up the contacts of the tabs... The tabs themselves were dirty beyond belief... I had to wash em with soap to get that sticky dirt off.

To Clean the tabs thoroughly you need to remove the springs... It is not a work for the faint hearted.

You preferably need the patience of a buddhist monk and keep a cat in the room when you remove or mount the springs again (when the springs shoot against the ceiling and get lost in you're room somewhere the cat will instantly know where it hit the floor :p ).

here some pictures :

Powering it on

I turned it on after a couple of weeks of being in my warm & cosy studio :p

Turning it on :

1- when turning on the switch I had this massive spike in audio output. (this is classic on vintage equipment), wonder how I could solve this.

2- It made all kinds of crackling noises + static when enabled... after 2-3 seconds the crackling noises disappeared though. How come ? ...

Not all the notes are working as suspected, the levers don't give good contact. The pedals have the same problem.


I notice a LOT of noise in the background, you don't hear this when you play though.
I'm not the electronics repair wizard I would like to be :-), any suggestions what might cause this would be appreciated !

What I have thought of :

- How they *designed* their amplifying part (opamp circuit design)
- carbon film resistors

I'll probably start by :

1- removing dust with my vacuum cleaner
2- cleaning the pcb's where the mice did their thing :p as well as removing a whole bunch of dead insects located on the pcb's ( now I know where the term "I have a bug in my computer" came from :p )
3- removing rust from the contacts

Questions :

- Someone told me caps could dry out after decaded... there's a lot of retro caps in there ;-) a lot of caps with those coloured ribbon patterns on it as well :p

Y cable

On the upper left front of the eminent 310 you have a stereo jack output.
When the jack is connected the eminent won't send any audio through his internal speakers.

I bought a Y cable to be able to send the output to my mixer :

Some pic's

Here some pictures how it looked when I bought it :

All the tab connectors were very dirty.
Mice excreted urine & feces all over the pcb's :p and the frame was full of dust, rubbing it off showed a rusty frame underneath :-/

Hi all,

Taught it might be fun for all sdiy'ers and vintage synth lovers to keep em posted about my eminent 310 restauration.

I bought this beauty (theatre version) for 50€.
It was located in an old barn, full of dust, moisture ...

Before powering up I've put it in my studio for a couple of weeks to be sure there was no real moisture left...

It powered up alright, but the keys didnt give good contact and I had the same problem with the pedals...

For those who want to know more about this vintage string machine :

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/may07/articles/eminent310.htm