No, this isnāt a synth, but it is an amazing piece of digital processing gear that only the synth community can appreciate and sounds fantastic when used with synthesizers!
This was a redemption round for me as I had purchased a different H910 in the spring and failed to repair it.
This Harmonizer blew its fuse as soon as I turned it on; I suspected there was a capacitor that shorted open in the power supply and I proved myself correct (I removed the three large caps and one of them had continuity between the leads). However, after replacing the caps, the 15v line was still hanging down and I was getting continuity between ground and 15v. I unplugged the top board from the unit and still found the continuity problem on the bottom board, so I checked the DBX cards and found a couple open tantalum capacitors. I replaced them all and the unit fired right up. Side note, the Eventide Harmonizer employs two or three cards with a VCA compressor/expanded manufactured by DBX thatās not entirely dissimilar to the DBX 160.
The pitch shifting āworkedā, but it was heavily distorted. I started at the output of the DAC, moved my way back and found that one of the bits was distorted coming out of the 40174 latch IC but was crystal clear at the input. I removed the chip, ran it through my digital IC tester and it failed. After replacing the chip, the unit works perfectly.
The reason I failed the first time I worked on one of these is because the pads on the PCB are extremely brittle and come off easily. When removing components, make sure your desoldering gun isnāt too hot or those pads and traces will come right off. The board I worked on in the spring quickly turned into a hot mess until I finally benched it (I got it dirt cheap so it wasnāt much of a financial loss). Gotta be careful with that desoldering!
Anyway, the Eventide H910 is the OG harmonizer and really has its own sound. A lot of people believe this to be the best sounding of the Harmonizer line as itās a bit gritty and somewhat glitchy and definitely lo-fi. Itās super useful in todayās world and sounds fantastic.