PC88mx Pitch Issue

[dburga01]

Hi everyone, I am a long time Kurzweil lover and am sad to say that my primary controller, a PC88mx, has a fairly serious illness. I *think* it is related to the aftertouch. While I am playing the keyboard it will occasionally start making crazy out of tune notes, which always seems to be triggered when I accidentally trigger the aftertouch. The pitch bend wheel also seems to trigger the problem, so I am not 100% certain it is an aftertouch issue. Interestingly, the crazy out of tune notes happen even if I am using the PC88 to control a different synth via MIDI.

The only thing that seems to cure it once it starts happening is to reset the PC88. Then it is okay again for awhile until the problem starts happening again. I vaguely recall reading somewhere that the PC88 action was notorious for having an aftertouch issue, but maybe I hallucinated that.

I am the original owner of the PC88, but it is definitely starting to get up there in years. My first inclination is to say it just needs a visit to a qualified Kurzweil service person, but I have no idea if any such people exist in my neighborhood (DFW Texas area).

So ... any advice from anyone? Is there anything I can do myself to remedy this issue? Or should I try to hunt down someone locally who is actually qualified to work on boards like this? Or should I (sob) start looking for a replacement controller?

Any advice would be welcome - thanks!
Darrell



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[Charlie Mann]

I (and several others) have had similar trouble with the K2000 keyboard.
Everything would play fine until the first time you touch the pitch
bend, then it's all wonky until you power cycle the unit.

On the K2000, I can go into Master | MIDI | Scope (or something like
that) to see the raw MIDI data from the keyboard. After opening that
page, I was able to determine it was the pitch bend causing the crazy
out of tune notes - there was a flood of pitch bend messages.

I took my keyboard to Washington Music Center in DC, and they replaced
the potentiometer for $120 ($75 of that was labor, $40 was markup on the
part!)

Is there a way to look at the raw MIDI data in your keyboard?

Perhaps record the data into your sequencer then look for either pitch
bend or after touch data.

Good luck!

Charlie


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[Roger J]

After power a normal power up, press together 4, 5, 6. These are the number pad
or phone dial buttons. This will take you into the machine level diagnostics for
the key scan chip, which is the source of all button, key and analog to digital
conversion for things like battery voltage, mono pressure, pitch bend, mod
wheel, and panel sliders. If you move any of the variables like pitch bend, the
display will show a number between 0 and 255 or a full 8 bits.

As you know, midi is 7 bits. In the case of pitch bend when all the way down,
it should be zero and all the way up 255, When allowed to center from up or down
it should be in somewhere in the middle, like 127 +or - 3. This is so there can
be an engineered dead spot in the middle, so if the pitch bender is bumped or
slightly moved, there will not be any midi data generated. The "dead" range is
wider than the +/- 3. Also make sure that other controllers do not interact,
i.e., the A slider is only an A slider. It will display what each is.

If the pitch pot is off, there are two pots under the bender assembly for
calibration. One is center and the other is gain. The 3 pot is mono pressure
gain. Take care to free the trim pot of the green lock tight first or you could
break them.

This also works on most other models since the K2000.

R





________________________________
From: dburga01 <***@yahoo.com>
To: ***@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Mon, August 23, 2010 8:31:24 AM
Subject: [KL] PC88mx Pitch Issue


Hi everyone, I am a long time Kurzweil lover and am sad to say that my primary
controller, a PC88mx, has a fairly serious illness. I *think* it is related to
the aftertouch. While I am playing the keyboard it will occasionally start
making crazy out of tune notes, which always seems to be triggered when I
accidentally trigger the aftertouch. The pitch bend wheel also seems to trigger
the problem, so I am not 100% certain it is an aftertouch issue. Interestingly,
the crazy out of tune notes happen even if I am using the PC88 to control a
different synth via MIDI.

The only thing that seems to cure it once it starts happening is to reset the
PC88. Then it is okay again for awhile until the problem starts happening again.
I vaguely recall reading somewhere that the PC88 action was notorious for having
an aftertouch issue, but maybe I hallucinated that.

I am the original owner of the PC88, but it is definitely starting to get up
there in years. My first inclination is to say it just needs a visit to a
qualified Kurzweil service person, but I have no idea if any such people exist
in my neighborhood (DFW Texas area).

So ... any advice from anyone? Is there anything I can do myself to remedy this
issue? Or should I try to hunt down someone locally who is actually qualified to
work on boards like this? Or should I (sob) start looking for a replacement
controller?

Any advice would be welcome - thanks!
Darrell







[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



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