Korg Volca Bass stopped working - help needed!

Synth Repair
1

I have a Korg Volca Bass that has stopped working after being in storage for over a year. When I power it on with batteries and/or with the 9V power supply, it’s now stuck on the initial screen where “Volca Bass” scrolls across the LED screen and all the red LED’s below the 16 bottom sequencer keys are lit except for key 16, which is flashing. A few other random LED’s flash on & off but that’s it - it’s stuck on the initial state “perma-scroll”, even if it’s left on for an hour.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I bought this second-hand and it’s way out of warranty, so any repairs are up to me. I can troubleshoot and solder, but the massive amount of SMD components is a bit daunting to say the least! I’ve done the system reset (power on holding MEMORY+FUNC keys, then hitting the record button) but that does nothing.

Thanks for any help.

2

I suppose you already tried leaving the batteries out and everything disconnected for a couple hours, then powering on again? Also if you physically tilt and roll the device in the air is there any strange noise like something loose rattling around in the case? Otherwise I have no idea.

3

hi, I have the same problem on volca keys…
you solved?

4

Is there an internal memory battery on the board that might be low or dead that might need replacing? If it stores custom sequences in memory, that probably requires a small button cell battery.