CRUMAR BIT ONE SYNTH - SOME QUICK NOTES ON ISSUES

As my BIT ONE decide not to work again today, I thought I would quickly share my thoughts on some of the issues that can affect this synth. A lovely sounding synth, but my advice is if you see one that is for sale and it's been 'fully serviced by our in house tech and works perfectly' take a big second look before buying.

It appears that this is actually a digital synth, at least the oscillator design is derived using an 8253 IC.
I recently asked about this and was able to get this reply.

The 4520 is a digital dual 4-bit up/down counter. It is not oscillating, it's just counting up and down at an audio rate. Those bits, plus a fifth bit coming from the 8253, comprise a 5-bit digital value that is transformed by the resistor network into an analog signal. When running in the audio frequency range it will produce the sound outputs. I would call this design a Digital Oscillator, not a DCO. The oscillator itself is made out of binary counters controlled by a microprocessor.