E-mu Emulator II+ screen replacement

About a year ago, I bought an Emulator II+, working but with some known (and, as it turned out, some unknown) issues. One was a hard-to-read display thought to be a due to a fading backlight. Well, the backlight was certainly dim, so I ordered a suitable replacement from Farnell. I turned out to be about 1cm too short. So I ordered a much larger EL foil and cut it to size.

Success! Except that the backlight was only part of the problem - the LCD itself had become very faint. Nevermind, I thought, it's a 16 x 2 display with an interface that is meant to be pretty standard, so I ordered a modern replacement. It was certainly bright, but it also was decidedly flakey, with random characters appearing from time to time.

So, time to replace like-for-like. Except the part is so unpopular today that component suppliers aren't interested unless you want to order at least 300 of them. And E-mu Emulator IIs were a low volume product, so its not like there's a huge market out there for specialist part suppliers.

Luckily, the E-mu SP1200 drum machine was much more popular (and is also, apparently, still fairly sought after by some Hip Hop producers) and its a 100% identical part. Still, no UK suppliers stock an SP1200 replacement display, so an order to the US was needed. Found one, but at a price around 4x the theoretical list price of the item (theoretical in the sense that you only get that price if you make a minimum order of 300). Oh, and a P&P charge that seemed more suitable for a lump of lead. And, oh x 2, UK import tax. And, oh x 3, and a charge from Royal Mail for the privilege of paying the UK import tax that was twice the cost of the tax! So that was about £35 and two weeks just to get the damm thing from A to B.

At least there is a happy ending. The new part arrived today, and I fitted it to the Emulator II+ in about 30 minutes. It's bright, clear, and works well. But, like the loading screen says, "This will take while"...

Oh and, as it turns out, LCD character displays from the 1980s weren't all that great anyway :-)