Korg Wavestation - Design History and Maintenance

Design History and Maintenance

The Wavestation was designed by a team which included Dave Smith, who designed the Prophet-5 and, along with Roland, helped to invent the MIDI protocol in the early 1980s. His synthesizer company, Sequential Circuits, was purchased by Yamaha in 1988. The division was renamed DSD (intended by Yamaha to stand for Dave Smith Designs). The team, ex-SCI engineers Dave Smith, John Bowen, Scott Peterson, and Stanley Jungleib, then went on to Korg in May 1989 and designed the Wavestation, refining many Prophet VS concepts.

The Wavestation A/D was the brainchild of Joe Bryan, then-Senior Design Engineer at Korg R&D. A guitar player, he wanted "something that worked with a simple midi guitar that would merge the guitar, synth and effects, and could be controlled from one or two buttons on the guitar." The idea was of little interest to his colleagues at first. Nevertheless, he found a prototype of a Sequential Circuits Prophet 2000 sampler and literally hacksawed the analog-to-digital converter circuitry from it, soldered that and a digital interface to the Wavestation's ROM bus to create the first prototype of the Wavestation A/D. The prototype convinced Bryan's colleagues of his idea.

Like many aging synths, a growing number of units (KB versions mainly) have begun to experience power supply related issues in recent years (flickering screen/audible "tick, tick" sound, etc.). While there is speculation by some that the problem is caused by improper mounting of electrical components on a small number of units, the more likely cause is simply worn out solder points, caused by the repeated heating up and cooling down of the internal power supply board after 20+ years of use. Resoldering all points on the power supply board should correct these issues in most cases. Also, replacing the K1626 N-channel MOSFET will likely fix the problem described above. Many of these synths also now have a very dim EL backlight, which can be replaced at very little expense. Many online retailers and auction sights sell replacement backlight panels and other parts dirt cheap.