[sdiy] Where to buy keybed ?

[Hugh Blemings]

Hi Richie, All,

On 24/01/2016 08:36, Richie Burnett wrote:
> Thanks for the link Tom, I'll give them a call in the week.  I did
> think about buying a cheap Yamaha/Casio home keyboard second hand off
> eBay just for the keybed but vaguely recall reading someones's advice
> against that somewhere!

I seem to vaguely recall that you could get Fatar keybeds direct as long 
as you ordered five or more.  In any case I'd endorse the remarks of 
others - buying something and sacrificing it is likely to be the most 
cost effective, if harder to reproduce for others, approach.

> Out of interest does anyone know what range of transit times are
> likely for a typical Fatar velocity sensitive keybed? Just trying to
> work out how often I'd have to poll it in software to get decent
> velocity resolution.

So I did some related poking at this not long ago myself as I was like 
wise interested [1]  For the KX76 keybed I was playing with, it seemed 
that 5ms to 10ms was the active range.

It's worth noting that the KX76 actually uses a leaf mechanism - so 
there is a single SPDT switch rather than two SPST switches employed by 
more modern PCB/membrane switch based designs - so switching times may 
be of a different magnitude to more modern keyboards.

As an aside I have this fantasy of one day building the controller 
keyboard to end all them all - one or two 76 note synth actions and a 76 
or 88 note piano at the bottom, all integrated to minimise weight.

Hope this helps!

Cheers,
Hugh



[1] http://hugh.blemings.id.au/2015/09/26/keyboard-tinkering/