How I multilated my Roland FR-1xb

[pentaprism]

Usual disclaimer applied: do this at your own risk, wear safety glasses, ..., blah.... blah....

I have a Roland FR-1xb. I prefer the acoustic sound but oftentimes I dont want to bother other people. The Roland is used solely for the purpose of practice in silence.

One of the annoying thing about the FR-1xb is that it does not have bellows pad. Im not sure I understand why Roland wants to save a few $ for this $2000 instrument. So I bought one from eBay and installed it:

center>

OK. It looks and feels good. But another annoying thing about electronic instruments is that they need batteries. Since I dont use the Roland very often, many times 10 minutes into playing, the batteries go low. I find myself untrapping the accordion from my body, going out to the garage to fetch a set of battery from the charger, .... Now there is another thing to do: I have do remove the bellows pad to access the battery door.

I have to find a way to charge the batteries inside the accordion.

So I open up the grill by undoing 4 screws:

center>

Once the grill is removed, I find a perfect location for the charging jack:

center>

The jact is a coaxial power jack, panel-mount, size M (Radio Shack part #274-1582). Here it is, installed in the accordion:

center>

And heres the result:

center>

To prevent possible damage to the accordion, when the charger is plugged into the jack, the batteries are disconnected from the accordion. Power from the charger goes only to the batteries, not to the accordion. In other words, the accordion does not have battery power when the charger is plugged in.

The charger I use is a smart charger by Ansmann, model ACS 410. Model ACS 110 Traveller is also a good one.

center>

Now once a week, I just plug in the charger and unplug whenever I remember. If I dont remember to unplug, theres little harm done. The smart charger will automatically switch to trickle charge when the batteries are full.

I realize that is not as optimal as charging each battery cell individually. But Im willing to make the trade-off for conveniences sake.

 

[dunlustin]

Very clever - only a matter of time perhaps before your "mod" is offered by Roland technicians.
Wouldn't dare do it myself - I get nervous pulling the bellows pins.

 

[Glenn]

Excellent post.
A brave modification. Well done.
Come on Roland, why didn't you think of this?

 

[jarvo]

Very clever....I will wait until my warranty expires though before such a deed is carried out.........Though to be frank I cannot believe that roland have not thought this one through......power up and charge up at the same time.........now if Carlsberg made accordions.........

 

[dunlustin]

I think the more expensive ones may do a charge in situ with notAA batteries

 

[jarvo]

OOhhhhhhhh Wahh Wahh ...................... I knew I should have pushed for a 7 :roll: :hb

 

[MikeOR]

Seems like a lot of trouble for little advantage. My 1Xb never runs out of battery power, and I still have the option to run it on mains with the supplied adaptor If required

 

[Soulsaver]

I believe there is a known small fire risk with dry cell batteries in general and in particular a raised risk during charging.
And Lithium-Ion versions are (even) more hazardous.

I suspect Roland thought the warranty/recall/bad publicity risk of even a couple of incidents to be potentially too costly.

I dont like playing my FR3 with power adaptor attached and dislike the break in play for (10 off AA)battery change. However I do have a swappable battery casette (Maplins c£2.00 replicates the Roland OE) so I always have one 'in the can', minimising down time.

It is a great post, and I'd probably do the mod too... but be aware of the risks. At least make sure you are insured for it.

 

[Soulsaver]

I think the more expensive ones may do a charge in situ with not AA batteries

7 & 8s do, 3s & below dont; 5s... cant remember

 

[pentaprism]

I'm not trying to convince anyone to do the same thing I did. But let me provide some more details:

- Like everything else in life, there is a risk involved. Even reading in bed, you can still be cut by the paper of the book.
- The charger is very important. Don't use a "dumb" charger, which provides a constant power supply and doesn't know when to stop. A smart charger such as the ones mentioned in my original post should have 2 safety features built-in: (1) it defects when the batteries are full and then switches to trickle charge, and (2) it has a timer to change to trickle charge after some time, regardless of battery condition.
- Use the charger designed specifically for the battery cells. The ones mentioned in my post are for Ni-Cad and NiMH batteries.

My other hobby is photography. I have a few power packs to provide high voltage to flash guns. The power packs, being more than 20 years old, originally came with Ni-Cad battery cells with the charging circuit inside. The chargers are but "dumb" chargers. About 5 years ago, after re-celling the power packs with NiMH batteries, not trusting the internal charging circuits (because they were designed for Ni-Cad), I bypassed them and started using smart chargers (happen to be the afore-mentioned ACS 410) instead. The power packs have worked fine for the last 5 years and I expect them to last many more.

 

[dak]

One thing to be aware of is that a number of fast chargers don't just check battery voltage and current but also its temperature to determine when to stop charging. Obviously, this does not work with the battery being outside of the charger. Also the best chargers check the battery state individually and charge individually. Such a charger costs probably something like £20 for 4 AA batteries, so it should have been possible to have a £50 option for an excellent built-in NiMH charger.

 

[JackieC]

Back when I still had my FR3x, my music partner and I had a gig and I decided to play the Roland instead of my acoustic. I had just charged up the batteries before the gig. After a couple of tunes, the batteries pooped out. Fortunately, I had brought the power cord, so I had to run it on AC to finish out the job. I have since, traded that instrument for an FR1x and I really like its lighter weight and simplicity. The power cord always is in the bag, plus I keep a charger going with 2 sets of rechargeable batteries.

 

[dak]

I have had pretty good experiences with Sanyo (now Panasonic) Eneloop. They also sell suitable chargers, be sure to get the intelligent one doing a fast charge (4h for 4) with each battery charged separately. The normal eneloops are 1800mAh. That's less than a lot of cheap batteries claim, but they are specified for something like 2000 charge cycles (I've nowhere near exhausted that so I cannot make claims about the full accuracy but they have kept up much better than others so far), and they keep the charge quite long even when not in use. There is also something like "eneloop pro" specified for a somewhat larger capacity (and maximum current, they are nice for digital cameras with a flash) but quite fewer recharge cycles (a third or a quarter or so), so they have less of an overall life capacity. Probably useful for actual gigs rather than normal practising.

Most other rechargeables just leak too much when idle and/or lose capacity so fast that the claimed larger capacity is available at best for a few dozen cycles if at all.

At any rate, the playing times Roland specifies for rechargeables seem utopical either way.

 

[JerryPH]

Eneloops are a good choice under certain circumstances. This style of battery has one main advantage and one main disadvantage. The main disadvantage is it's relatively low mAh rating of 1800. In reality, when measured, most are between 1550 and 1600 mAh. Their main advantage is a potentially important one for some people, and that is that it retains up to 95% of it's total charge even when not used for 60 days. A standard NiMh battery under the same conditions could lose 25% or more of it's charge in that same period of time.

One does have other battery options. PowerEX makes quality 2800 mAh batteries. When tested, they average between 2780 and 2910 mAh. Their big advantage is that if properly charged via a quality charger, they will permit playing for as much as 40-50 percent longer periods of time over the Eneloop brand.

The "ultimate" option would be to use the higher capacity XXX Eneloop, however, they are a bit more than 2 times the price of the PowerEx batteries, so one could in theory come close to the maximum mAh capacity of the PowerEX and have the advantage of the Eneloop's power retention when not in use. However, there is that 2X price differencial and for best longevity and recharging, one would need to recharge the batteries individually in a quality charger like a MAHA 808C.

Quality chargers are important no matter what kind of battery I used. Using cheap fast cycle chargers not only cuts functional life a rechargeable battery by more than 50%, but has the potential of overheating and causing battery leaks much easier than if the charge time and amounts are more carefully controlled and slowed down, as done in a quality charger. If you play long periods of time and charge often, PowerEX are the battery to use. If you play a little with long periods of time in between of use, the Eneloop batteries are the ones to get. I can see the potential for having a 12 hour continuous session possible on a singe charge using PowerEX batteries.

If budget is no option, get a quality MAHA charger, charge the batteries individually (if possible, I don't own a "V") and use the very expensive XXX Eneloop batteries and get almost the best longevity performance with the longest power retention (less need to recharge after not playing for 2 months).

If I could make one strong suggestion, no matter what battery you use, if that accordion is not going to be played for a month or more, pull that battery pack out of the accordion. Leaking batteries also emit acidic gasses that can permeate the accordion case and cause minor (leading to major) issues to circuit boards. Things start off small, little hangs and what not, and if not addressed, can lead to some very expensive repairs.