Somewhere in the outskirts of Saigon this beauty was waiting for me

Snatched a Roland Alpha Juno 1 for $50 a couple weeks ago. The condition wasn’t exactly perfect, but the semi-busted screen and a bunch of dead functional buttons don’t really bother me, I’m going to set up an external controller for it, and the Alpha Junos are notorious for their poorly designed menu-divey interface anyway. However, the keyboard also needed some repair, the C3 key was misbehaving.

Double triggers? Thanks, but I’ve already got an OP-Z.

I found a very helpful guide on keyboard disassembly and took the synth apart.

Removed the faulty key and discovered that someone has modified the keyboard by putting cotton wool under each key. It may sound weird but I decided to leave it this way for two reasons: I like the way the keyboard feels right now (and I’m not sure it would feel better if I removed the cotton wool), and I’m too lazy to remove 60 more keys.

Applied some Abro electronic contact cleaner under the membrane, and it works like a charm.

Now I have to set up my Roland A-01 to control it (which will take a lot of time), and this beast will join my setup.

Categories: music

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