Repairing Korg Minilouge XD, a Power Issue

Korg Minilogue XD wont power on?

The Minilogue XD was a very easy fix for me because Korg made this so modular and easy to work on (thanks)! But just because it was easy, doesn't mean it will go without a hitch. (Warning) If you open yours up, know there's always that chance you'll be selling it on eBay "not working, for parts", because of something that happened during the repair. Practice electronics safety etc.

Taking the cover off

Just a few Allen bolts, and a couple screws in front of the keys and you've got this.

First off, I wonder what those conspicuous looking holes are to the right of the joy stick? Did Korg have plans for more functionality?? Who knows. Moving on to the repair.

The top portion and they keys are separate. Note where the silver grounding strips are, then gently unstick them and unscrew all of the silver screws, and two black screws near the keys. This whole black module will now come out and you'd be able to see the power circuit and barrel plug, and all of the other stuff I don't know anything about.

Bad DC Barrel Plug

You can see some of the plastic cracked on the barrel jack, and a lot of dust around it.

These plugs are switching plugs, that sort of confused me at first. Here's a great video on how they work, if you're interested. But know that you will only get a power reading off two of the pins, the third does nothing on the Minilogue XD.

When I plugged in the power adapter, I was getting 9v on my multimeter, no problem there. So I proceeded to de-soldering the barrel plug (after removing the board, just a few screws, and don't forget the two on the back).

Source of the problem

After removing the solder, and the barrel plug, I noticed the solder pad was missing on the circuit board. This explains the dust.

This entire component felt weak since day one. I had a feeling something like this would happen.

In order to fix this, I had to do four things.

First, I had to repair my barrel jack. Superglue did just fine.
Second, carefully scraped some of the blue off the trace in the area of the yellow dot on the image above.
Third, soldered the jack back in on the two sides, then soldered a small wire from the trace to the jack lead.
Fourth, (after testing!) I caked the thing with hot glue. It's never felt more stable.

And that's it!

If this helps a single person, my blogging time was worth it. Good luck!