emusonacid! legacy

I just Purchased another :) E64 that had a Backlight fault - Cheep :)

I thought i would just share my experiance of changing the Backlight , with others on here, as these tips may save you a lot of time & Even a damaged Display.

I Removed the LCD Driver & LCD Screen from the sampler to replace Electrolumance Foil. OR BACKLIGHT in Studio Slang.

The Replacment EL Should be rated at 115 Volts - 400 to 600 HZ

I actually made my Own EL Lamp - But i wont go into that here :)

If your backlight has never been changed your in for a bit of fun as emu Decided to use "Mega Industrial Stength Adhesive to hold the Original foil behind the Glass LCD Envelope. Which Means you can not just slide it out You have to seperate the Glass LCD and Metal Bezal from the Display Driver PCB -- Very DELICATE OPERATION :( .

To do this get yourself a clean Worksurface and make sure you are wearing an antistatic strap ! as you could kill the display with static Body Charge.

If you look at the display it has a load of metal tabs on the back of the PCB all bent at 15 degees, You Need to bend all these tabs straight but be very very carfull not to put any presure on the glass screen "OR IT WILL CRACK" and that would be the end of your EMU Display for sure.

With all the tabs bent straight very carfully lay the display face down on your work surface and remove the PCB from The LCD Bezel. AS they seperate you will see the glass and metal stay on the table along with the micro rubber contacts , Dont Touch the contacts otherwise you will get skin oils on the contacts and your display won't work again correctly.

Now you have the Display in bits you can set about changing the EL Foil (Backlight)

Unsolder the two supply cables with an antistatic soldering iron.

and use a hairdryier on low setting to soften the old backlights adesive.

Carfully pull the old Backlight from the PCB.

You can now go ahead and solder the new backlight in place if you want or do as i did and reassemble the LCD Display and then slide in the new backlight afterwards as it's easyier to see where to mount it this way...

If your not gifted with patiance and not good working on very delicate things then i would say --- Leave your backlight as it is more likley that you will damage it more.

IF on the other hand your backlight has been replaced before then it should be an easy job as you can just unsolder the old one and slide it out the side of the lcd...

Hope this info is usefull to you :)

Hi,

Thanks for the info... I had the same issue with my E-Synth.

Good old E-mu for sticking the EL down!

I wasn't game to dismantle the display, as it's all too easy for the conductive strips to either drop-off or stick to the PCB more than the glass!

Luckily the replacement backlight (sourced from Telesis) was slim enough to slide in ontop of the old one. I desolder and removed the contacts from the old backlight and soldered the new one in place and it all worked fine.
Cheers,

Mike.

Hi Mike, Yes You Were Lucky Mate, I tried to Slide the New EL between the Original and the LCD but there was no way without damaging the NEW EL it was going to fit. But It's Certainly good to know that some people may get away with this method :) as Dismantling the LCD bezel and glass is not for the faint hearted for sure :)

Thanks for that info !

All the Best

Solderbridge