Synsonics Drums (model 5281) by Mattel, analog electronic drum machine made in USA in 1981-1982 It has toms, kick & snare sounds and tone/pitch control and a kind of sequencer with 3 memories.
I went to buy a broken Ensoniq SD1 in the joyful town of CARPIANO near Milan (Italy) it was quite a journey similar to SILENT HILL for the deep mist around. The road was narrow with ditches on both side.
Once arrived (nearly) safe and sound, the seller was quite a nice chap, but the Ensoniq was dead as hell. But ok, that's part of the job, if interested here's the LINK to the SD1 repair. Just before leaving, I noticed the plastic corner of a Synsonic in the middle of a lot of old broken arrangers (fancy dusty stuff like Solton and elka omb italo arranger). I asked for the price and quite kindly, the seller just said to get it away for free. Finally left Silent hill and got back home to check out the Mattel.
GOSH! a mess, a total mess of corrosion battery leakage everywhere. The springs were totally eaten by the years. I do hate that kind of job, especially at that point. Lucky enough, the main board SEEMS not to have any damages but I have to investigate further.
Ok first thing to do: plastic gloves and remove that MAZDA battery from Reagan era. There are 8 screws on the back of the drum: 4 longs + 4 shorter. The rest is pretty easy: the battery slot pops out with no problem. Just desolder the positive and negative wires to begin cleaning the whole slot with iron brush and isopropylic alcohol.
UPPER Remove the battery slot, then the mainboard (no screws). Remove the only flat that holds the connections to the 4 pads (try to memorize the wires locations for later reassembling)
Ok, nice intuition, the board has to be cleaned too, as well as contact and rubber graphite. Better check contact with ohm meter rather than continuity mode. Everything seems ok. Reassembling can be tricky because you have to place the battery slot under the main board, and adjust the pads wire so they won't prevent from closing the whole case. Now it's time to test!
Quickly testing the Synsonic hooking 9VDC to the battery pole (if you use a PSU, remember it's positive central and it uses a 1.5mm connector) with 500 mA and it switched on without a hitch.
The sound are actually pretty good as far as I remember, with nice deep low tom, not much control on them but ok. Now I'd like to figure out how to add some kind of trigger control, but I don't like much the idea to drill original machine, so I will just keep it a 80' funny drum.
If you need it, here's the english MANUAL
and here the SERVICE MANUAL
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