I was traveling during the holidays and took my M:C with me and I accidentally packed the wrong PSU, sadly I did not notice until I plugged my Cycles and tried to turn it on. It did not even turn on, just this distinct, almost “steely” smell. The PSU voltage I plugged in is 26V, which is way over M:C limit, so no suprise there. When I came back home and plugged the original PSU in, it did not work.
So I was wondering if anyone has any experince with this, if anybody has dealt with a similar issue. I already contacted Elektron, but I am a bit worried that such an issue is not fixable.
Bad luck.
You might have fried it. And its probably not covered by warranty, manufactures do make a point of telling you to only use the reccomended PSU.
Sucks, but there it is.
I once blew up a DIY project I was building, it actually went bang, and produced a bit of smoke. Kinda cool.
At first I thought the M:C had a separate power board, but the separate board seems to be for analog I/O. That means that Elektron thought that musicians are more likely to damage the audio jacks than mess up the power.
The board isn’t densely populated, so it should be possible to perform surgery with a ~$100 temperature controlled iron with a fine tip. Don’t attempt a repair with a $15 soldering iron that came out of a blister pack. (but you also don’t need a $15k BGA rig)
Another possibility is that one of those tiny black boxes is a resettable fuse. If so, then your M:C may just work when you get home and plug the right power supply in. If not, then you need to find a tech that has basic SMD/SMT rework skills and can debug and fix your M:C for a fixed cost, not at an hourly rate.
I strongly recommend this one, but any label maker within your budget should do the job.
Another option is colorful tape. Unlike paint, tape usually doesn’t smell.
That black box by the DC jack looks like a reverse protection diode (another method to protect circuits).
I’d be willing to bet that the protection diode is just burnt out.
If you can get a part number off of it then it’s going to be a super simple repair. Parts should be less than $1 and repair could be done by a fairly novice solderer. Just have to make sure it’s in the correct orientation (it only goes one way) They tend to short out rather than blow open. So if you measure short (or very low resistance) with DMM (set to diode test mode) in both directions, that’s the culprit.
Edit: I added a picture with my best guess as to which parts are what. The picture is blurry so these are just my best guess from experience.
The large pads look like the right size for a current limiting resistor. The black box looks like a protection diode. These are both right at the DC Jack so I’m almost certain that is their purpose.
One of those components should burn up in order to protect the voltage regulator. That’s exactly what they are there for. To protect the more expensive components from user error and catastrophic damage.
I had no idea there was this much electrical engineering expertise around here. I would have just written off the whole board if it had happened to me!
