Have been using a ROLAND XP50 since 1996.
Recently changed to a new backup battery at the shop (where they overcharged me by $50).

3 months later - the LOW BATTERY sign is on.

I changed the battery by myself.

3 months later (less actually) - the LOW BATTERY sign is on (again).

I then changed the battery immediately.

3 seconds later - the LOW BATTERY sign is on (yet again!)

Most people don't have this problem. Any suggestions? Help anyone?

I had a similar problem with my Korg Wavestation EX. ONe day internal patches got initialized. I restored them to factory and next time I powered the unit up it was back to blank initialized memories. TOok it to the shop and had the battery replaced. Several months later same deal. Just initialized one day. Checked the battery status and it showed up as low. It got me curious. TOok it to the tech and had the battery replaced again. I took my last chance thinking that it might have been a defective battery or something unfortunate like that. Well, just a few weeks after that it initialized itself again. Battery test showed up as low.
Got fed up with my tech and all the ambiguity around this problem. Took it to Korg. After all the testing it turned out that something was shorting out on the main board. No clue as to what it was exactly but whatever it was has been fixed. Tried installing the batteries that showed up as low before the majic fix and all worked. Had it working perfectly ever since.
But it was quite annoying.

Instead of taking it to just any repair shop you might want to try to take it to Roland (unless of coarse they are the ones doing the wonderful job reparing it for you already...).

-ED-

[This message has been edited by 3351 (edited 09-17-2005).]

As ED mentioned, something that is shorted (or at least electrically leaky) could be the problem. Any competent technician can measure the current being drawn from the backup battery, and determine if it's excessive. While I don't know what the XP50 should normally draw, backup current is often on the order of microamps and some backup circuits draw only nano- or pico-amps, making for years of life even from small cells. Finding a good tech would indeed seem the next step.

By the way, anyone changing a battery (or otherwise working inside modern electronic equipment) would be wise to avoid static discharge. You can easily "zap" many MOS circuits, and sometimes the failure is subtle, as in drawing excessive current while otherwise apparently still working.

--Barry