[sdiy] SL880 Pro problems

[Tom Wiltshire]

I’ve had one of the even earlier Studiologic Fatar midi keyboards for years - Studio90. It’s had various problems over the years, but it’s not a hugely complicated thing, and generally taking it apart and fiddling with it and putting it back together gets it going again. Like Roman said, cracked joints or tracks where stuff gets plugged in and out is pretty common. I think I’ve actually replaced the DC jack in mine, and I’ve resoldered various other joints in it. Various MIDI problems have occurred, but they’ve only ever been down to connectors going bad (pull off, clean up, re-seat) or bad joints (re-heat, re-assemble, bingo!).

One of the more dramatic problems was purely mechanical - the glue started to fail and the weights glued under the weighted keys started to fall out - leaving some keys feeling extremely light and plasticky, but others properly solid and weighted. Very bizarre, but very simple.

Yes, you could probably rebuild the thing from the ground up with a DIY circuit. The Fatar keyboards schematics are flying around and not that hard to work out. But it’s a lot of work if you don’t need to bother, and it’s almost certain that you don’t need to bother.

Tom

==================
       Electric Druid
Synth & Stompbox DIY
==================



> On 6 Nov 2021, at 21:04, Mike Kelly <mike at downlode.uk.net> wrote:
> 
> Hi, I wondered if anyone has experience in troubleshooting Studiologic SL880 midi keyboards. I picked up this one second hand and really like the weighted action.
> Since the off there has been a problem with some rogue midi output signals. Plugging a volume pedal into the volume socket seemed to solve it. Now however after a couple of years of use I am getting random and unstable outputs and it’s unusable. I tried changing a couple of the electrolytic caps as I had spares. The board generally looks OK and the settings functionality and the LEDs all seem to be working fine, so I think there’s not much wrong with it. If anyone knows a likely point of failure on these boards please give me a shout. 
> 
> I thought about replacing the crystal as it looks a bit aged. Marking is 24.0MHz, HCJ-30 02-02-57. Would any 24MHz crystal do? Or am I on the wrong track.
> 
> Alternatively if there’s a way to put a whole new DIY circuit in there I could go that route. They’re Fatar keys I believe, with aftertouch.
> 
> Thanks.
> M
> _______________________________________________
> Synth-diy mailing list
> Synth-diy at synth-diy.org
> http://synth-diy.org/mailman/listinfo/synth-diy
> Selling or trading? Use marketplace at synth-diy.org