My keys have been busted forever, then I saw this post the other day which inspired me to finally hack em' off. The integrated battery was an excellent idea and had a 20,000 mAh battery that I kinda hate lying around so it was perfect (I use them for lower power stuff and this thing needs a decent current draw to not auto shut off...).
I also make little DIY midi controllers (featured in a few pics here), and wanted to power them from the same battery, so I spliced in a female USB port and have it accessible from the back panel. And now my MicroKORG can charge my phone if needed as well, I guess?
The mod wheel I just replaced with a spare twist pot (1k? 10K? I didn't even measure lol). I 3D printed a lil cap for it.
With the pitch bend wheel I tried to get clever with a series of switches to enable me to do goofy octave switching. Unfortunately, I never figured the math out right on the resistors, so some of the positions are out of tune. Thankfully if they are all switched up, it's in tune. I always figured I could just adjust the master tune if I messed it up too bad.
Front panel is a spare strip of walnut that was miraculously the right width. It's super glued to just the top part of the synth case so I can still take the back off.
Procedure
- Use a screwdriver to disassemble the MicroKORG from the back. Open the case and un plug the cable connecting the halves (power)
- Unplug the connectors to the keyboard (on the keyboard side). Unplug the mod wheel and pitch wheel. Plug in resistors to bypass them if you don't wanna do something fancy with them (see this post)
- Use double sided tape to tape a LiPO battery on the bottom side of the case. Make sure it's not in the way - you want to be able to close the case at the end.
- Thread a spare USB C cable through a hole in the ttery compartment and plug it into the charging port of the battery -this will let you charge without taking it all back apart.
- Get a spare usb cable and cut the end off that doesn't go into the battery. If you want an extra USB port like me, get a male to female USB cable and cut it in half. Splice the power and ground together of both of the cables, then solder / screw the power and ground into where the original battery terminals were (little PCB on the bottom side of the case).
- Cut holes into your case for the extra USB port if you have one, and also for a twist pot if you chose to replace the mod wheel with one.
- Find a way to cover the hole in the front… I used a strip of walnut and super glued it to the top of the case.
