I just bought a Matrix 6 off of eBay which appeared to be in good enough shape. However, when I brought it home to test it out, no sound came out. It powered up and all, scrolls through the mayriad of menus and options, but nothing in the way of music.

I called the guy I got it from and asked if he knew how to fix this and he suggested recalibration: nothing. He suggested turning off local control: nothing. He sent an email with a page that had another idea, holding down store while powering up. That allowed me to play the 00 patch but went back to soundless once I changed patches. This is a ridiculous problem, if anyone can help I'd appreciate it. I haven't gotten to do anything with it since I got it!

Check and see if the local off is selected...This disconnects the keys from the sound engine..

Well at least that would seem to indicate that the audio electronics are working fine so that is a good sign that you have at least heard audio from it.

You probably should change the internal battery. Do you know how old it is? Maybe that is causing the internal patch data to be lost which could result in no sound.

I have no clue how old the battery is. I guess it's the one it was built with, the previous owner mentioned nothing about anything internally.

All digital electronics with memory have an internal battery to hold info in memory when powered down. If it is the original battery it would have died many years ago. I'd definately change it because it may fix your problem plus an old battery can burst open and damage the circuit board.

By the way you may even find that circuits from this era may have even soldered the battery directly to the circuit board. I guess back then they figured the gear would become obselete by the time the battery died. If that is the case you will have to desolder it to remove it and resolder a new one back on.

Hi Postblank

My situation was almost identical to yours. I bought my Oberheim Matrix 6R at Ebay on May 21. This rack version is like the Matrix 6 but without the keys.

When I plugged it in, there was no sound except for the background noise - all the visual menu stuff was working.

So a lot of menu surfing and after reading this post today I opened it. I was this close |<->| to start pulling components out of the unit

However I behaved and located the round silver battery which I lifted just a little bit - I guess it was enough to disconnect it and reconnect it. Then by incident I noticed that the (grey) flat ribbon cable which connects the internal boards seemed to be not properly connected to the socket in the middle - so I fixed that.

Guess what - now the baby works and I am enjoying all the analog sound coming out of it.

I don't know what did the trick exactly but I suggest you try the same in this order:

1. There should be a wide flat ribbon cable in the keyboard version as well - it looks like a standard internal (ide/ata) hard drive cable. Make sure it is well connected to all the sockets. Turn on the unit again and try playing.

2. If step 1 was not successful, try lifting the battery just 1 or 2 milimeters and let it slide back into the original position. This is certainly worth trying before taking it out completely and searching the world for a proper replacement battery. Turn on the unit again and try playing.

I hope these simple suggestions help you and that you will post the results here.

Good luck
Flemming

------------------
This is my signature

That is great news makrel. I'm so glad it worked out to be so simple for you. I can only hope that Postblank can get it working as easily.

I bet you are really enjoying those analogue sounds now. Oberheim make wonderful sounding synthesizers.