I regularly have customers ask me for headphone recommendations, and I’ve settled on a few favorites. I prefer open or semi-open headphones, and prioritize lightweight, soft-touch comfort. A good set of headphones provides clear, high-fidelity sound and is comfortable to wear for hours. I’ve used quite a few headphones for keyboards and keyboard repair, and … Read more
If your keyboard sustains all the time when your foot is off the pedal, and then stops sustaining when you press it, you have the classic “reversed sustain” problem. The good news is that it’s almost always a setup/polarity mismatch and not a hardware failure. On many Yamaha instruments the pedal’s polarity (open/closed) is detected … Read more
Yamaha P-121 with Key that Doesn’t Play Two of the most common issues I encounter are keys that either don’t play at all, or play at full volume. Contact issues are, invariably, the cause. There are two parts involved in making proper contact: The rubber contact strips, which move and compress as the key moves, … Read more
I recently had a customer request I prepare replacement chips for his Roland R-880 and GC-8. I have the XGecu writer described below. I hope this is helpful to some intrepid individual or technician performing their own upgrade! A device to flash the memory chips, such as the XGecu T48 EPROM programmer. These are readily … Read more
A loudly clacking key might point to a common culprit: a cracked sub-chassis (or sub-frame). Roland used these plastic sub-chassis as a rib structure supporting sets of four or twelve keys inside the PHA-4 Concert keybed. The good news? Replacement parts are cheap, the job is fairly straightforward. What are the symptoms? The most common … Read more
I recently had a customer reach out to me reporting that her Yamaha P-155 would not power on. When I inspected the piano, I found a destroyed power adapter and a burned power inlet. I’m not certain what caused it: Damage like this could be caused by not fully inserting the plug, by a power … Read more
My customer first mentioned that her KR-5000 had started “crackling.” By the time I showed up, every output—speakers and headphones alike—was dead, though all the buttons and sliders still behaved. Diagnosing the KR-5000 I popped a set of headphones into the headphone jack and heard nothing, which let me rule out blown speakers. Additionally, there … Read more
Last week a customer wrote in about his older, beloved Roland E-16 that had begun humming and would occasionally reboot. This was caused by a poor power adapter. As power adapters age, they can become unreliable, and often introduce humming or erratic behavior. I’ve put together a search tool for Roland power adapters, but I … Read more
Look closely at the photo above. Your P-525 detects which key you play, and its velocity, with those little rubber contact strips. You can read more about them on my digital piano troubleshooting page. Those tiny white flecks mean the contacts no longer work correctly. The smallest debris—or even a single cat hair—can cause significant … Read more
When a customer asked me what power adapter they should buy for their Roland FP-90X, I figured it’d be a quick lookup. A few minutes later, I was elbow-deep in Roland service manuals, product listings with conflicting voltage specs. Some sellers offered “compatible” power supplies at both 9V and 12V. (There’s some incorrect information on … Read more