Waldorf Blofeld Bad Encoder Fix

For over a year some of the knobs on my Blofeld have gotten a bit eccentric. At first it was just a bit of jitter when turning the fourth knob (Osc Level / Filter Env Amount / Env Release / LFO 2 Speed / Matrix Destination / Arp Clock), but eventually it got so bad that turning the knob clockwise would result in it going 2 steps up, 15 steps down, 4 steps up, 10 steps down, etc... until it took 5 minutes just to go from 64 to 90 on the damn thing. I dealt with it for a while, but then some of the other knobs started acting up, including the "Bank" knob which also doubles as a value knob for pretty much every parameter that's not on the front panel. After a bit of frustration I kind of quit programming on the Blofeld. I thought about designing some kind of software editor either in Mainstage or Logic's Environment or Reaktor, but these days I don't have time for anything.

Here's someone else's video demonstrating what my Blofeld was doing:


Originally I had tried opening up the Blofeld and spraying some air underneath the knobs, but that didn't help. Then I asked a friend who does synth repair in New York what he recommended, and he advised spraying some tuner cleaner under the knobs instead of air. That also did not work. A few years ago there was a post on matrixsynth advising replacing the encoders. I looked at the encoders in the Blofeld and decided that was not something I was comfortable doing (and I had built a PAiA 9700s before).

I was kind of stuck. I had this Blofeld that I couldn't really use the way I wanted to, but I couldn't really sell it the way it was for a price that I was willing to settle for.

Luckily, I happened to stumble upon this youtube video which, while not useful in and of itself, included a link to http://synth.stromeko.net/DIY.html, which contained some very useful info about how to fix this problem.

Basically, according to stromeko, the problem was that the encoders needed additional capacitors. He advised capacitors that were "not much larger than 1nF." I checked RadioShack's crappy website and found they don't really measure their capacitors in nF, but I was able to find this chart which shows that 1nF = .001 uF, which RadioShack did carry.

So tonight I went to RadioShack hoping to get seven pairs of .001 uF capacitors, but of course they only had four pair. Whatever. So far only two of my knobs were unusable and another two were just flaky, so that worked. I had big dreams of doing a short, succinct youtube video, but my camera sucks at up close, and the Blofeld's display just does not show up well on it, so FUCK IT.

Long Story Short: I did the mod and my two unusable knobs are now as good as new, and the two flaky knobs are fine too. It's relatively easy to do if you're an experienced amateur like myself (over 40 hours spent soldering on the PAiA 9700s plus a few other projects) and know to watch out for solder bridges and to keep the iron away from anything it shouldn't touch.

So far so good, but if my Blofeld starts smoking or explodes in the next few days, I'll be sure to update.

I tried taking photos, but it didn't work out so well.

Before


After