Synthchaser Battery Eliminator for Oberheim OB-Xa Synthesizer

Description

The Oberheim OB-Xa synthesizer stores presets in memory with the use of a battery backup.  Unfortunately the battery is soldered to the board and not easy to change yourself.  It’s also not a cheap battery that’s easy to find at the local drugstore.  Also, the original 40 year old CMOS RAM chips are failure prone and memory retention issues are very common on these synths.

Enter the Synthchaser Battery Eliminator module!  This easy to install module replaces the original memory chip and doesn’t need a battery to save the data, much like a flash drive!  For less than the cost of 1 battery change by a tech, you’ll never need to change batteries again!

Watch a video demonstration of how it works and how easy it is to install:

One cool thing you can do with this is you can get multiple modules to maintain different banks of sounds.  You can have one with the factory presets loaded, and pull it out and put in one with your custom sounds.  Be done with messing around with the ancient cassette interface to back up and load your patches.

This works with Oberheim OB-Xa synths with ROM revision XA-B or higher (typically ones that have 120 patch memory).  If you’ve installed an aftermarket MIDI adapter, this may not be compatible.  If you have any questions on compatibility, please send a picture of your control board and I’ll let you know if this will work for you.

If you don’t already have one, please consider adding the optional IC extractor to your order.  Using this tool makes it much easier to remove your old chips and reduces the chance of accidentally damaging something.