Electro 3 partial shutdown

[thinkerbill]

I love my 2012 Electro 3-73, and between gigs I've lately been setting it up at home and leaving it on 24/7 so I can just walk up and play (like an acoustic keyboard -- always alive). But oddly, after it's been on for a day or so, some audio functions quit working. For example, the FARF/VX sounds just stop, and the B3 key clicks also quit. Power cycling fixes the issues (thus far). I've been an IC chip designer my entire career, and AFAIK digital circuits either work or they don't -- they don't work fine for a while and then get tired. I'm wondering if anyone else here has seen this kind of behavior…

[harmonizer]

I have not seen this behavior with my Electro 3-73, but because I assumed that it would be bad to leave the power on for long periods of time, I set up the AC power to my Nord keyboard and my EV powered speaker so that when I turn off the light switch to that area, the power to both gets turned off. This has prevented me from accidentally leaving the power on overnight to both these devices many times.

[thinkerbill]

I've been an IC chip designer my entire career

Then you should know to just blame the software!

Seriously, many reasons exist for degraded (or just wrong) digital logic: degraded power supplies, flawed logic design, poorly-designed state machines lacking recovery states, degraded noise margins, degraded timing margins, cosmic rays (not kidding), etc. Fundamentally, digital electronics are analog: that is, they use real-world (imperfect, noisy, jittery) voltages to encode digital information and can be disrupted by electronic noise, clock jitter, or even ionizing radiation. Consumer electronics don't require the expense of rigourous, robust, reliable, or redundant design because they can tolerate cycling the power to recover the system.

Given the age of your Nord, I don't find it surprising you see the occasional misbehaviour.

[thinkerbill]

Hey pterm, thanks. The digital designers at my former behemoth IC employer had all the tools to make their circuits bullet proof, so I guess I've been presuming a little bit on the much smaller Nord team. That said, the Electro 3 has performed wonderfully for me under normal usage.