New Battery for the Alesis Andromeda

The last period my Andromeda Alesis acted strangely when I switched it on. It was either out of tune, or all the presets sounded very distorted. Every time it started up it also asked to set the mod wheel in the lowest position and press a button. I started to suspect that the battery could be empty. I read on the Internet that the average life span of the battery of the Andromeda is about 4 years and I already have it longer than that. So I decided it was time to open it up.

There are a lot of screws on the back and on the bottom of the synthesizer that you need to remove before you can open it up. After that you have to be careful because there are connection between the upper and lower part of the case. The first thing I did is measure the battery and it gave about 2,9 Volts not that bad, but I decided to change it anyway. the only problem is that it is soldered to the main board. So you can't easily change it. I decided to remove the main PCB to work on it.

I de-soldered the battery and  installed a new battery holder for a CR 2032 battery. In this way I can easily change it in the future. I would not recommend this job for someone that has no electronics experience by the way. Taking the synth apart, removing the board and getting everything back together is not a very easy task. The new battery measured 3.2 Volts by the way after I installed it. So maybe the old one wasn't as good anyway anymore. After this measurement I put the synthesizer together and I switched it on. It still seems to work, but it gave the same problem as before, so I did another factory reset. I hope it will stay OK now.

After that I decided to find a new place for the Alesis Andromeda, since its place was takes yesterday by the Moog Memorymoog. I took the Roland V-Synth GT and Yamaha Motif XS6 from their spot and raised the keyboard stand a bit so that another stand could fit under it. And there was the new spot for the Andromeda :) It is a bit lower than the XS6 used to be, but the result is a way nicer height for me to play on it. Another advantage is that I can also see the display better now. And even though this is a an analog synthesizer, but as you can see on the inside there is way more digital electronics in it and no discrete electronics stuff at all, so for me as of today it qualifies as a digital synthesizer ;) OK enough about this. Mission accomplished.