Bolsa Bass Owners and Buyers Resources

Last month I bought a pre owned Bolsa Bass from Reverb.com. It took nearly a month to arrive here in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I turned it on and everything sounded great except for one thing: It was really out of tune.
The third knob fails and I can´t get in tune. Sending it back to the seller was not an option since It cost like $100 or more to ship this thing from Argentina. So I decided to give it to my local repair guy.
He told me I needed to replace the chip that correspond to that knob. He also told me that the synth was cheaply made.
So I wrote to the guys of C&G to see if they could send a spare chip to replace it.
The answer was:

"Hi,

Sorry to hear that. Unfortunately we don’t have any spare chips.
You should return the synth to the seller.

Thanks,
Chris"

also he told me that They wouldn´t be producing anymore bolsa bass in the future.
If your bolsa bass breaks you will not be able to find a solution for fixing.
So dont´buy this piece of crap. WORST customer service ever.

It sounds like you have had some bad luck, which can sometimes makes people understandably angry.
If that seller won’t help you and you feel he mislead you regarding the condition of the unit - contact Reverb.

Yes you are right about reaching the seller first but the point is that C&G don’t keep spare parts of the bolsa bass and they don’t care if you break yours. They won’t help you

wait so you bought something second hand and are mad you are not getting a free chip?
Dude, cmon. take a deep breath and come down off entitled Mountain for a second.
Perhaps offer to BUY One first

Who said I wanted a chip for free? I offered to buy the replacing part in the first place. They don’t keep any of them.
How this is my fault? I bought a modern boutique handmade synth and I can´t fix it.

It is a discontinued model now isn’t it?

Yes, they are sold out of them and won’t be producing more.

I’m confused - why would you expect them to have parts then? It completely sucks and you have my sympathy - but come on man. You can probably source the replacement chip elsewhere quite easily if your repair guy knows it’s model number or C&G identify it for you.

It is the actual Bolsa Bass that lot of stores are selling right now. It is not a 1978 Moog (wich may be easier to find parts than this bolsa bass).

The chip model is “stm32f417”. It is easy to get it online but a blank chip would be useless. I need the code inside to make it work. Thanks Wannop

What is the chip? Why not source it directly?
It’s very likely you can get one from one of the large electronic suppliers.

Hi! thanks for your help. The chip model is “stm32f417”. I don’t have tech knowledge but I guess I need a code to make it work right? Thank you. You are already helping me more than guys that build the synth.

Hi @gasp. It is correct the Bolsa Bass is out of production, we made an announcement about this a while back. It has been almost 2 years since we produced these and we don’t stock that part. Actually we never stocked that part because the boards are manufactured elsewhere.

Sending it back here for repair will probably cost you more after shipping than buying another one all together, so it would be best to resolve this with the seller.

btw, the chip is available here:

https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/stmicroelectronics/STM32F407VET6/497-12075-ND/2793093

The binary is available here. We flash it after it is soldered down to the board.

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Thank you SO much! This is the response I was looking for and never got in our emails back and forth.
I’m sorry if I was too harsh with you.

Friends?

Sounds like for 11$ and a chip flash you may be back in business. I’m sorry if i confused what you said but the wholw worst service ever stamping your foot and you said “send a spare chip” not “since you guys don’t make this anymore and i bought it in an South American Brothel high on Flakka what should i do?”

so i got confused.

that sounds like there are jtag points, so a tech should be able to sort it…

honestly, though, it sounds very odd that the microcontroller (stm32f4) would caused a tuning issues on one pot, that sounds more like an issue with the voltage level supplied to the gpio… again your tech should know this.

(and yeah, as a 2nd hand product, Id be tackling the seller)

thank Sheeswifty and Technobear for your comments and your help!
I will update when I get this synth running in tune again !:hugs:

yeah I’d make sure to check the pot itself too.