this is isn't the exact one, but it's the same model:
(photo courtesy of combo-organ.com)
Of course, some things are too good to be true, and when he finally got it home and plugged it into an amp the thing wouldn't pass any sound. The reason for this became clear upon opening the plastic cover. Evidently a mouse with an appetite for copper wire had been living in there for a while at some point and had chewed away a bunch of the wiring (maybe 10-15% or so).
My friend knows that I'm big fan of Farfisas- I played a Compact Deluxe in a band a few years back and currently own a VIP233 (which sounds great, but totally different than the signature sound of the Compact series).
VIP233 (again, not mine, but same model)
(photo courtesy of combo-organ.com)
I'm even getting married to a Farfisa player in a couple of months (who, as it turns out, just recently lost access to the one she was borrowing, so we were already looking around craigslist and ebay for one).
My friend asked if I wanted it to try and fix it up and I gladly yes. I don't have much experience working on big things like this, but I do have a little bit of electronics background. I've repaired plenty of audio cables, replaced obviously-blown resistors and have scratched and soldered to PCB traces; but that's really about it. I figured it would be a cool project to work on and I could hopefully learn a little along the way (to later fix the piles of sort-of-working-but-not-really gear scattered throughout the house). And since it's 2008 I figured I'd blog about the process, because that's what we're supposed to do now, right?
The First thing I needed to do was to get my hands on some schematics, but an initial web search didn't turn up anything. Well, it didn't turn up anything free. The site musicparts.com kept on popping up and they appeared to have a copy of the original repair and operation manual with schematics. I recalled seeing this site in the past when searching for things and have always been weary of it, mainly due to the poor and outdated design. Don't get me wrong: I love simple, clean, straightforward designs; it's just the cheesy Corel Draw logo and all the animated .gifs like this one that make me a bit worried:
Because as a rule, I don't like to give my credit card information to any site that looks like it may have been put together by the Cyber Dsign Clan.
After looking around the site a bit more, I saw that it was recently updated and they had working telephone numbers and such, so I bit the bullet and went ahead and dropped $35 on the repair manual and schematics. I have to say that I'm pretty impressed with their service- I received a link to a good quality .pdf within about 30 minutes and it had everything I needed. Plus if there's any part of the schematic I can't read, I can call them with any questions and they'll reefer to the the original and help out for no additional cost.
Digression:
What's the deal with copyright and and a business like this? I mean, they're selling digital copies of what I can only imagine is copyrighted material by Farfisa. Furthermore, what's really stopping me from uploading or distributing the schematics and making them freely available? They watermarked the .pdfs with "musicparts.com", but that doesn't necessarily mean they own the rights to the document, does it? If anyone has any idea, let me know in the comments. Because if I have the right and it's legal to upload these for anyone that's in a similar situation, I'd like to do so.
So okay. I now have what I think is everything I need: schematics, soldering iron, spools of wire and all the rest. Now to crack the thing open and figure out the next step.
