And…Roland Roland Roland.

no pad at all, no connection,

On the front page of this website is an “artistically” blurry shot of my Roland Fantom S, the main workhorse of my music gear in the early 2000’s as it had a sequencer built in. well… it was down for many years because of a corrosion issue on the “edit” button, caused by a cat sitting on it, and hacking up a hairball onto the keyboard. i assumed i cleaned it up good, but apparently not under that important button internally (i just wont use stock sounds and effects and that meant i wouldn’t use the keyboard). i tried to replace the button with one on hand but for some reason i put it in and failed to look closer at the actual board damage. not so much failed, i didn’t have the tools to see it.

jumper to nearest pad

few more years down the road, i have the tools, and more knowledge. i decided to make one last attempt after i had successfully made micro repairs to a laptop board (.005mm). after digging the main board out and looking at it under my microscope, i found, there was NO pad connecting the switch to the board… well… damn. made a little jumper from the switch pad to the nearest trace, and the new switch works better than the remaining stock switches.

all the stuff i had to move to get to the main board. (not pictured because its on my workbench)

in a few more posts, anyone reading this may see how i gained more hands on knowledge, and in the past two years, i would say i have learned more by spending a few dollars on components, and some gear (even the super cheap stuff).

I know, i can do this all in one post, but i may touch on a topic that has nothing to do with fixing a keyboard. i may be giving views and pointers on Arduino and raspberry pi, 3D printing, building props, silly “no point but looks cool” objects.

i may add analytics and something on the website to let me know if i’m wasting my time but i have no desire to load your system with trackers from facebook and the like. its going to be used to see if the site has been visited at all.

well. its simple, i start updating this page but find im doing alot of things, then forget to document them because i’m on to the next project. my next few posts will be making up for that, im trying again. How hard can it be to type a few words? not hard at all if i could find the time.

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