MFC-101 Gutshots - LED's

D

devbro

Member
While pondering how to replce the LED's to solve my colorblind problem, I decided to look under the hood. As you can see from the pics, the MFC is built quite well. Switches and LED's are attached to circuit boards, each row of switches is attached to the chassis by the switches and connceted to the main module by ribbon cables.

To replace the LED's would be a fairly difficult task. Each row would need to be removed, the protective sleeve around the LED removed and then unsoldered from each lug and sucked dry of solder. Then a new LED could be installed.

An easier solution would be to replace the resistors sitting on the side of each LED. Or, if memory serves me, I think another resistor could be soldered in series to increase resistance and dim the LED. This would require someone with some electonics aptitude to verify.

My colorblindess makes this board extremely difficult to use in a live setting and I'm looking for some answers. I dont think Fractal is eager to start doing hardware mods.

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Is it that you have trouble distinguishing between red & green? If that's the case, the resistor swap won't help. It'll just make the LED glow dimmer (I wouldn't recommend trying to make it glow brighter).

You could try and swap the red/green bi-colour LED for a red/blue model with similar specs. Otherwise you'll need to replace the resistor as well.

That's a lot of soldering but it's highly repetitive work. Once you figure it out for one spot, the rest are the same. Easy for any competent tech to do.

It'll be made easier by the really excellent modular design. Cliff: kudos man. The strip boards instead of one giant board with switches on it is a nice touch.
 
Its a red/green thing. I was thinking that if they were dimmer, I could discern between them more easily. Different colors would be better.
 
Check out section 5.1.2 of the manual for another way to use the IA switches:

5.1.2 “General Use” IA Switches in Axe-Fx mode
Setting an Axe-Fx IA switch to “NONE” disables its Axe-Fx function but enables its “general use” MIDI commands. These are also totally viable for controlling the Axe-Fx! You will not get the dynamic LED functions offered by “native” Axe-Fx IAs, but you will be able to save the ON or OFF state of the switch in every individual MFC-101 preset.

I'm colorblind as well so this is the mode that I use.

A blue/red or blue/green toggle would be a better long term solution but as you mentioned it'd be way too hard to modify.
 
devbro said:
Its a red/green thing. I was thinking that if they were dimmer, I could discern between them more easily. Different colors would be better.
Click to expand...
There are three leads on a bi-color LED. Usually you just run the resistor off the common cathode. I can't tell from the pictures you posted how Fractal has the MFC set up. If they were trying to match brightness between the red and green sides it's possible they might need separate resistors on each anode lead, but usually the bi-color LEDs are balanced so you don't need to do this. Saves one resistor in the layout. If it if the case that there's just one resistor per bi-color LED then changing it will change the brightness of both the red and green states of the LED equally.

DigiKey has some red/blue bicolor LEDs listed. And King Bright's site lists red/yellow and green/yellow pairs. Whether they match brightness and current specs with the one's in the MFC now, I couldn't say.
 
I don't know how to tell either by looking or testing the LED's to determine what voltage they require. If I could source direct replacements in a different color, I would have them replaced. I can't imaging it costing much to swap out 24 LED's. How can we find out the maker of these bulbs and the specs? Also, FAS wrapped them in a piece of plastic tubing slit up the middle as some sort of protective sleeve.
 
How about getting out if optical tools can help? You could get a green or red foil and look trough it. If the behavior of the LEDs is now visible for you (one colour gone brighter and the other darker), you just had to put little pieces of that foil or something like that on every LED to solve the problem.
I'm not shure if it will help, but it's less destructive then soldering anything out, so this is worth a try.
Bernd
 
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