Got a chance to get one that looks very good for 350 EUR.
I placed a bid not expecting much but I have no idea if this is actually fair.
I know the Normal DX7’s go for more; i recently had a chance to get a bad looking DX7 for 500 EUR, with a cracked corner and a cigarette mark between the 2 sliders.
Any help would be appreciated, i am quite unfamiliar with vintage gear.
350EUR is fair for a IIFD in decent condition. Personally i prefer the mk2s (II / s) for their much lower noise floor, crisper sound, better buttons and better interface (well, a bigger display at least…).
If you’re on eBay, go into the search filters and click on completed items, it’ll give you the list of what they’ve all gone for recently.
thanks, got an idea on how much a replacement of the battery would costs?
IT has the replace battery error appearantly.
I did replace that in a DX7IIFD once many years ago, I don’t remember how much it cost but can’t imagine it was more than €10.
yeah found them for 11$ or something. thats not a dealbreaker
If you own a DX7, you’re going to have to get used to changing the battery. It’s really simple, the guts are laid out really logically and it’s just two very easy to access solder joints to get it off/back on, unless someone’s already installed a battery cradle in there, then it’s even easier.
Yeah got a solder tool so I’ll change it out. Weirdly enough it has the error but it works fine
Picked it up just now. Mint condition, so a pretty good deal
Yeah, it usually starts with just gobbling up the names of a few presets, then the presets will start going to shit. The real problem is the battery degrading and leaking all over the circuit board, but that’s rarely a problem if you change it soon after you start getting the warning.
Check the Mod wheel. They often fail.
Weird, in my experience the iifd’s where the same if not more. I seem to come across a lot of cheap original dx7’s
Damn this thing is a sweetspot machine. I cant play keys / read notes and Im just jamming away but it almost seems like theres a scale mode on this thing.
I think 300 is a bargain! Just the beautiful keybed alone is worth the money… the build quality overall is awesome, buttons are much better than one the MK1… go for it 
Congratulations on your new score, OP! If you get along with the workflow that thing has the depth of sound design and the build quality to be a permanent fixture in your studio.
Have you tried the floppy drive yet? That was one of the things I had to replace when I got mine but I don’t know if it’s a common problem.
Having owned the iifd and the original I much, much prefer the iifd. It’s objectively better though I guess some people swear they prefer the converters in the og, I guess some might like the look of one over the other too? I couldn’t care less.
I go long periods without playing my iifd (too many keyboards, not enough room to have them all set up at once) and I always start thinking about selling it, then I set it up and play it again and remember what a truly amazing instrument it is.
Has anyone here tried swapping the drive with a floppy emulator? I’m a little bit tempted but I don’t know if it’s worth the price.
I’ve done the Gotek/flashfloppy floppy emulator swap on both of my II-FDs. I’d say it is worth it if you want to have a lot of patches and not bring a computer with you. It’s far easier to just use a sysex capable MIDI to USB cable to connect up a pc or laptop running Dexed and manage your library that way, sending cartridges and patches to the II-FD. Having said that, a cool guy named Martin Tarenskeen wrote the DX Convert python software that includes the dx7iisyx2fd tool that allows you to convert DX7 cartridges from sysex format (easily made with Dexed) to floppy images, which are easily copied to a micro USB drive and inserted into the Gotek. If I remember right, I had to install the Gotek drive upside down in order for the USB port to line up with the floppy disk slot in the II-FD’s end panel. And the LED numerical display on the Gotek is partially obscured but still readable. If you are doing the drive swap yourself in your free time, and like to tinker, I’d say it’s worth doing, especially if you get a cheap standard Gotek and flash it with flashfloppy yourself.
Thanks! Haven’t tried the floppy drive yet. I managed to reset it yesterday and I am going to load some patches onto the cartridge tonight. Am I correctly seeing that has 16 x 32 slots??? Insane since there’s so many patches online for free.
Next up is replacing the battery so I can save my own sounds. Aside from that the thing is absolutely spotless and like I said, I feel like there’s a scale mode on that thing.
Can’t play keys but I spend the better part of yesterday evening just PLAYING.
The dual mode is BOMB. Layering a pad with a bass or shorter sound is just so much fun. My first keyboard synth, it eats up a lot of space in my bedroom studio but I fell in love. The Keys are so nice compared to my keystep 37. Midi worked immediately with my Digitakt but I’m going to get back into Ableton and play in chords.
Reason I wanted a vintage synth is I discovered just playing patches is like meditation… Even though I have 0 musical knowledge…
You can just use your midi out of an audio interface to midi in as well right?
You should really use DEXED on your computer, it’s a freeware DX7 but also editor for your DX and librarian, it is so easy to transfer the patches into your DX with that. I love it. Only thing is to backup your internal patches first with any Sysex App. There is one big difference in the way that the DX MKII stores e.g. Mod Wheel and Aftertouch iirc, If you load DX MK1 patches they will not have this information in it…
EDIT: just realised I never used the floppy drive 
Only Sysex Librarian and Dexed
Reverb is also a bit more reliable, eBay results are arbitrary and way way incomplete.
Yes, you can certainly try using the MIDI I/O on your audio interface, but success will be dependent on how robust its MIDI functionality is. It needs to be capable of transmitting/receiving sysex messages without truncating or corrupting them. There are various places on the 'net to find info on which MIDI interfaces are better at this than others. For dedicated USB to MIDI cables, I have great success with these cheap ones, surprisingly. I think it’s rebranded, since I see others that look just like it with different brand names for about the same price.