Korg Forums

Hello To All,

I am getting a low battery message,and want to change my internal battery on my trinity v3 61 key model,but really don't want to take a chance screwing anything up. Is there any thing special I need to know after I take the bottom plate off? Where is the battery? I have the PBS-Tri And the HDR-Tri options both installed,will i have to remove any of these boards to get to the battery?

I would appreciate any and all help on this,and hope that it is an easy process,as I am going to attempt it tomorrow,and would prefer to hear from someone who has done this before.

Thanks again for any and all help!

Mike

Hello Mike,

I have not had to do this, but In the forum Sharp noted what kind of battery it needs etc etc. Its not an easy job. And that would be better done with a tech cause the battery is soldered to the Mother board. If you fry the mother board, your trinity is might as well a thick piece of metal.
So unless you're good at soldering and putting stuff back together then you can give it a try. Search the forum, i know Sharp even provided pictures of the battery.

Good luck and keep us posted.

blessings!

MusiKman wrote:Hello Mike,

I have not had to do this, but In the forum Sharp noted what kind of battery it needs etc etc. Its not an easy job. And that would be better done with a tech cause the battery is soldered to the Mother board. If you fry the mother board, your trinity is might as well a thick piece of metal.
So unless you're good at soldering and putting stuff back together then you can give it a try. Search the forum, i know Sharp even provided pictures of the battery.

Good luck and keep us posted.

blessings!

Thank you MusiKman!

I took it very carefully to replacing this battery..Found out it was a 2032 battery,and it was hard soldered to the motherboard. I pried the clip off the battery,and left the contacts up on the motherboard,and picked up a cell battery holder from my neighborhood electronics store,then soldered wires to each of the contacts on the holder to the existing contacts on the motherboard..Fortunately,every thing works fine..Just not the best fit I would have liked for that battery holder to be sitting in there,but I made sure it will not bounce around and short out anything in there.

Sequenzzer - did you by chance take any pictures of the battery replacement/soldering process? I also have a 61 key Trinity that threw the dreaded low battery warning back at Thanksgiving 2011, and I've been searching the forums ever since, to no avail. This is the first thread I've found that anyone even attempted to replace it themselves, for fear of frying the motherboard.

I'm kind of like you, in that I'd rather attempt it myself than pay a Korg service center $100 in labor (or more) to replace a $2 battery, not to mention the closest repair center is an hour away from my house and I'd be in their queue for weeks waiting my turn without my keyboard. Right now, unless I reload the sounds every time I turn the Trinity on, it's a 15 year old paperweight.

I opened it up in December, know where the battery is, and am comfortable using a soldering iron. If you don't have any pics, and it's too much of an inconvenience to open her back up and take some (although it would be much appreciated!), can you advise exactly what cell phone battery clip you bought, what gauge wire you used, and where/how you soldered everything to the board? I'll be sure to take pics and post them to this thread after completing the process so that everyone else (who will surely start experiencing 15 year old batteries dying soon) will also know how to replace it themselves.

Thanks!
Jason

I just found this excellent post (with lots of photographs) for custom soldering a CR2032 battery holder into a Korg DW-8000, which is slightly different from the Trinity. However, this is a great reference for anyone brave enough to attempt to replace a soldered battery in Korg's old lineup, as I'm finally going to do this afternoon!

http://www.pallium.com/bryan/dwbattery.php

I have used this one for mine, worked without having to use wires, or anything else. Soldered directly into the PCB - maybe I did bend the pins a little, but I don't recall doing anything extraordinary to make it fit, was a smooth ride... (Edit: just looked at the pictures I took when mounting the holder, the PCB has provisions - holes - for both a solder-in type battery and a holder, but you'll have to solder the holder into a different set of holes from the ones used for the battery. Just look at the PCB traces and it'll be obvious, the holes are right next to the ones used for the battery.)

You can get the dimensions from the link and find a similar holder in an electronic shop near you.

That was actually much easier than I thought. I should've fixed my Trinity 2 months ago when the battery first died. I simply went to RadioShack and bought a standard cr2032 holder, soldered 22 gauge red and black sold core wires to the leads, desoldered the original battery out and replaced it with the holder. Total cost was about $6 with a new lithium battery and it took me roughly 2 hours including the drive to the store and back. If I still have the Trinity next time the battery dies it will be much easier to change

Thanks for the info!