Repairing a CR-78

This is a post that's been in my backlog for a while, because I knew it would take some time to write it...

Back in February this year (2013) I got a request from someone if I could repair a CR-78 with severe battery leakage. A repair-shop that was asked about it wouldn't do it because it would take too long and not be worth the time/money.
Well... I'm cheap, but I leave no guarantees that I'll fix it 100% or that I'll do it quickly, but I'll do my best. That was good enough for this guy, so he let me have a go at it.
The actual "practical" symptoms weren't actually that bad though:  Not possible to save rhythms

However, considering the massive leak, it was clear that this machine needed more than just a quick repair.
No way should anybody give up on a such a fine machine unless it's totally hopeless.
Challenge accepted!

Roland CR-78 non-rechargeable Lithum battery replacement mod

Replacing NiCad with Li.

So, I was servicing a CR-78 for a friend and the old leaking battery had already been removed when I received the unit. After I was done with replacing all the damaged components I was going to put a non-rechargeable battery in there. It's probably possible to replace the NiCad with a NiMH battery, but they recharge slower than the NiCad (so you need to keep your machine running longer and more often to keep it charged) and I'm not sure exactly how they work when they reach their full charge.
As I'm not an expert in rechargeable batteries, I decided that the safest option was to use a non-rechargeable Lithium battery.

Repairing a Synare Sensor

Picture grabbed from video ;)

I was asked to take a look at this strange thing and see if I could repair it.
Supposedly it made fun noises once upon a time, but not anymore. I had never heard of it before and I couldn't really find any schematics, but I decided to look at it anyway.
(I actually fixed this back in Decemeber 2012, but I've been too lazy to post about it until now ;) )

Repairing an EHX Super Space Drum

Electro Harmonix SSD repair

Somebody had noticed I had done some repairs on my own gear and asked me if I could take a look at an EHX Super Space Drum that wasn't working.
Symptoms were that it started to not trigger well until it finally gave up and refused to trigger at all. I had absolutely no idea what could have caused it and my initial thought was some sort of bad connection or other mechanical problem.
I had never repaired anything for someone else and I didn't have any pressure on me really. It was more of a "just see if you can do something about it" request, so I thought it'd be fun to give it a shot!

Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of it so I'm using a frame of a video clip I made with it :)

The picture is from AFTER I had serviced it. Read on if you're curious about the alligator clips to the left.