Matrix 6R abnormality

Hi. I am the original owner of this Matrix 6R. I hadn’t used it for awhile. When I fired it up, everything seemed normal, display is fine. However, it seems that on almost all of the patches, every several notes plays louder, with a slightly different timbre than the rest of the notes in the patch. Usually a harsher sound. There’s a dot that dances across the patch name when it receives midi, and I think that when that dot is in the sixth position (letter), that’s when I hear the distortion. Any ideas? I bought a new battery from Syntaur, as the original is still in there. I haven’t changed it out yet - might that solve this. Thank you.

I have a Matrix-6 and have had a similar issue.

If you’re lucky then the voice chips have some corrosion. The other most likely problem is those chips have gone bad.

The way to fix or diagnose the problem is to loosen or remove each of the voice chips one by one and give them a thin coating of Deoxit or another contact cleaner.

Before you begin make sure you are wearing a ground strap on your wrist grounded to the synth’s chassis. Also use a chip puller and work slowly as you gently rock the chips to loosen them.

Make sure each pin gets coated with the contact cleaner but they shouldn’t be soaking wet or dripping.
Gently but firmly seat the voice chips and hopefully this will solve issue.

Thanks for that. Indeed, I fixed the issue by removing each chip and using a pencil eraser on the contacts, as someone else on the forum suggested. I wish that I had sprayed a bit of deoxit also, but all seems well at this time.

Very good. I’m happy that you were able to resolve the issue without having to shell out for new voice chips.

Just out of curiosity, do you know whether these chips are still available?
Thanks.

I don’t know if you use the CEM 3396 Wide or Narrow. I see some of these (wide), new from China on eBay. They are not cheap. You can also find them used as well.

Thanks for the reply. Good luck getting the parts for yours.