I have another follow-up.
After requesting a battery and not a repair from Teenage Engineering support, they sent me a pregenerated link that allowed me to purchase a replacement from them directly for $50, plus $14 shipping & handling.
So, it can be done.
So iFixit, when they have them, sells official batteries from TE (logo and all) for $30, but TE needs to sell them for $64?..for a $600 device that has known battery issues (among other quality control problems) that should be replaced/recalled when those problems are known and apparent? Hmm.
Thanks for doing the legwork either way.
Remember when they were taking op-z pre-orders they said about how long the battery would last (flying over the Atlantic and back or something like that), and then the battery shipped was a big downgrade, which they then boosted up a little with the 1st firmware update? I wonder if there is something a bit more to this than at first glance. My indicators now never hit full, even after a long charge, when in the beginning they would hit max within 20minutes tops.
So much for that. Didn’t work.
Furthermore, when I keep the unit plugged in, it makes what can only be described as a “squeezing” sound. The attached file is really a zip file containing the two audio clips.
Remove the “.zop” extension and extract as a zip to listen.
Archive.zip.zop (311.5 KB)
I replaced the inner pouch cell with the one ordered below from Amazon:
Less capacity, but better that nothing.
You’ll need to keep the plastic frame from the original battery to get everything to align to the charging pins.
Now THIS is what I was looking to see could be done. I don’t have battery issues right now but when the day comes, good to know the cell itself can be swapped
Wouldn’t a 503048 fit? It is 30mm wide instead of 22mm and 700mA.
I feel this should go without saying, but to anyone attempting this, be very careful how you disassemble batteries.
Possibly. I just went with what was readily available from Amazon.
OP-Z has abviously an issue with draining the battery in the powered down state.
There must be a small current flowing even if the unit is not powered on. I have not bothered to measure it but it is not a good electronic design.
So after not using my device for 18 month the battery protection kicked in and the cell was disconnectet from its terminals by the BMS. Thus the battery showing 0 Volts.
Recommendation:
If you store your unit for a longer time, remove the battery from the unit.
I could not wake up the battery via its terminals. So I had to disasemble the battery. Could revive it, as soon as I had direct connection to the cell.
The cell used in the battery is a
382758
3,8mm x 27mm x 58mm
3,7v
740mA
2,73 Wh
So far my original cell was internaly only down to 2,8 Volts, so it is still fine and I use it and switch cells only if the original is worn out.
I had no luck finding any manufacturer that is selling the 382758 or the original battery.
But I found a cell 452855 1000mAh on the net.
It will fit in the compartment if yout trim the sides and back of the original battery frame. Keep the side with the terminals and enough of the frame so that the assembly has connection, because the terminals are specific for the OP-Z.
Finding the original:
I fix it ran out of stock long time ago.
I do live in germany so we have a repair center which is shown on the teenage engineering website. But I got notice from them, that they tried and cannot order the OP-Z batteries and had info from TE, that there will be no possibilty to order them in the future.
Strange, as TE is still selling the OP-Z.
Also a pitty that a synth for a few hundred bucks is broken for the most musicians if they don’t use it for a while, since the don’t have the ability to rebuild batteries by themselves.
Perhaps batteries will become available again if the op-z field is using the same ones.
Assuming that Amazon sends back returns and doesn’t just push them back out to the next purchaser (also aside from the fact that nobody should do this anway.)
Don’t the batteries come and go on iFixit?
