[sdiy] My homebuilt Keyboard - update

Tue Mar 6 12:12:03 CET 2007

Steve,

you're right, maplin no longer sell them. I bought one when they were in 
stock years ago, played with it for a few days and binned it. To say it was 
"substandard" would be putting it mildly. It was probably the worst keyboard 
Id laid hands on.

Im not sure what you want to do.....do you want to build the actual keyboard 
mechanism part or the whole synthesizer?

Options:

A) buy a keyboard mechanism from Fatar (Not the studiologic range because 
they are fully-assembled midi master keyboards) who sell 49, 61, 76 and 88 
key mechanisms with and without hammer action. Conversion to your local 
currency puts this at about 400 quid for an 88 key hammer action job I 
believe (check this because my local currency isnt uk pounds).

These really are very good. Although I was tempted to buy one of these 
initially (thereby saving me years of research and oodles of man-hours in 
experimentation), personal preference dictates; I just dont like the 
contacts on these things and I dont like an all-plastic solution. Now they 
have some solutions with partly wooden keys, but this is so embedded that 
you wouldnt know.

B) buy a midi controller keyboard and disassemble it (remove the case) to 
put it into your own synth design. this is probably the cheapest option. You 
can pick up a cheap midi controller keyboard from ebay for next to nothing.

Buying a midi controller keyboard, dismantling it and sticking it into your 
own case with synthesizer electronics may seem like a waste, but it does 
offer several advantages...

1) If you really want to, you can add sensing mechanism to the existing 
structure, such as optical slotted switches to give you displacement 
(position) of the keys. This has been done often enough now by various 
people (including myself and some guys from this list) that you wont be 
short of assistance if you need it. There are lots of other methods of 
achieveing this too.
the benefit of this is that in addition to offering MIDI code output from 
the controller keyboard for compliance with external kit, you also then have 
the option of a much more expressive sensing mechanism. I believe that most 
people use 8, 10 or 12 bit sensing mechanisms, but I personally found it 
most cost effective to use banks of multichannel 24 bit Analogue to Digital 
converters.
2) Adding aftertouch (since most cheaper MIDI controller keyboards dont 
offer this) can be as simple as laying some QTC cable at a strategic point 
under the key mechanisms for a keyboard-wide aftertouch OR placing 
individual pressure sensing devices under each key for individual aftertouch 
(personally, I favour the latter).
3) MIDI controller keyboards tend to be quite compact and light and through 
personal experience, I have found them to be very easy to integrate with 
existing designs. Removing extraneous circuitry and unwanted functionality 
is also pretty easy. Of course, leaving it in is easiest of all....

C) Build your own keyboard from scratch.
Let me tell you, this is probably the most difficult and most time 
consuming; but the most rewarding if you get good results.
It can be as simple as giving a set of key dimensions to a local wood 
workshop and getting them to make them for you or butchering an existing 
piano (gulp) or keyboard and re-engineering the key mechanisms to suit your 
needs.
Or you can make your own keys out of plastic or composites (fibreglass or 
carbon fibre). The cost - based on my own experience - ranges from the 
equivalent of 150 pounds for a basic 88 key keyboard with wooden keys and 
plastic ivory effect keytops to round about 500 pounds for a hammer-action 
88 key keyboard with wooden keys, ivory effect keytops, displacement 
sensing, hammer sensing and individual aftertouch. Cost is subjective 
though; if you use cheaper parts you can do this for less than half the 
cost.

If you're wondering about these different sensing mechanisms, there are lots 
of schools of thought on the usefulness and accuracy of them all.

My personal position is that I dont feel MIDI offers the flexibility or 
bandwidth conducive to offering realistic expression in the arena of 
evermore complex sounds and arrangements. It is a great universal 
connectivity fabric though and support for it shouldnt be discarded. There 
is absolutely nothing wrong in catering for both camps to get the best of 
both worlds; just a little more complicated and a little more thought into 
the design.

EK

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steve Moorby" <steve.moorby at ntlworld.com>
To: "Edward King" <edwardcking2001 at yahoo.co.uk>
Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2007 8:29 AM
Subject: Re: [sdiy] My homebuilt Keyboard - update

> Hi,
> I'd like to build a synth / keyboard.  Where can I buy a keyboard from
> in the UK.  In the old days Maplin stocked them but now they've gone
> like Tandy.
>
> Thanks
> Steve
>
> On Mon, 2007-03-05 at 01:11 +0200, Edward King wrote:
>> Richard,
>>
>> over the weekend, Ive reworked some areas of the keyboard. The weight is 
>> now
>> 64% of what it was.
>>
>> this is primarily down to the Chassis. The total area of the chassis was
>> 6600cm, but I found that I was able to reduce this to 4250cm. As its a
>> prototype, id allowed extra room for design changes but actually found 
>> that
>> I have more room than I thought I would.
>>
>> In hindsight, I perhaps could have gotten away with an aluminium chassis
>> instead of galvanised steel, but Ive actually wrecked a couple of digital
>> pianos before by simply getting carried away (the switching mechanisms 
>> and
>> PCB's tend to be the things that fail) and wanted to build this on the 
>> tough
>> side.
>>
>> Are you hoping to build your own keyboard?
>>
>> EK
>>
>>
>>
>>
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