fatar vmk "dead notes"

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4greatKeyboards

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I have a 1-year old VMK-188 from Studio Logic from Fatar. I have a dead note, the F below middle C. Is only dead when no upper adjacent note is pressed. Any ideas?
 
Might be an open ground on that key...and when the other key is pressed then the key makes a full circut...Im just guessing but it sounds reasonable.
 
Might be an open ground on that key...and when the other key is pressed then the key makes a full circut...Im just guessing but it sounds reasonable.

there are no grounds to keys... so unlikely...

ime... that's normally a torn/misaligned switch... search for the cleaning keyboards thread and read through... if your lucky cleaning may get it... but doubtful...
 
re: vmk-188 dead key

More info. The key is not totally dead. I have noticed that is responds normally if no other other notes between it and about middle C are being held down. It's like a screw is missing inside somewhere that should hold the switch/contact assembly fast.

I will have to get into it. I will use the excellent posts and graphics I found elsewhere on this site to to the procedure.

Please see my other recent post and questions about abandoning Gigastudio 3 and upgrading my system.

Thanks!
 
I'm one of the guys who posted pics of the Fatar keyboard in the post on that topic.

How did you make out with your board? I agree it would be wise to open it and look for a damaged contact.
 
Sorry to be delayed (music business).

I will post results soon as I do the fix. Meanwhile I avoid THAT note! Probably will take WEEKs b4 I do it.
 
Still Waiting

I have Fatar rubber/plastic (?) key contacts on back order since January 2010 and am still waiting for delivery. Soon as I get them I will open up my Studiologic VMK-188+ and replace the lot of them and post pictures of the process here in this forum). My Vmk is about 18 months old and more and more notes now are starting to go bad, in terms of original (great!) touch. (I have played it approximately an average of 1.5 hours daily.) To give an idea of my usage rate: mostly I practice/play Chopin's works, also a little Liszt and Rachmaninoff.

Oh, and for the past few weeks I have been running the East West Quantum Leap Bosendorfer 290 virtual instrument. I remember the first day I got it really going (took several days to get there) I probably played it for 6 to 8 hours straight. It sounded so beautifully. The next day I couldn't play because my fingers were so bruised. (Hey, I remember reading that Rubenstein, the Russian virtuoso that preceded Tschiakowski (sp?), in later life practiced 20 hours a day and could give 2 back-to-back 2-hour concerts (total 4 hours)! A master and a worker!)

And back to the EWQL virtual instrument. Even though I love it and it's the best virt or real one I've had, I must say these EWQL guys should fix their piano. They own this certain Bosendorfer. Guys, it needs work. Your samples, your recordings are great but the piano itself needs voicing badly. For instance: B2. Terrible. That hammer has turned to STONE. Replace it. And that's not all. Much of the recorded samples give WAY too much noise at the highest dynamic levels. My guess is, ALL the hammers need either deep needling or replacement. Bosendorfers are _famous_ for lack of noise, just more volume as velocity goes up (but not your Bosendorfer: please re-voice and re-sample, all 19000+ samples (sorry)). Still, what you've got today is beautiful and worth the $500 (verses the $150,000 real thing).

Cheers!
 
And back to the EWQL virtual instrument. Even though I love it and it's the best virt or real one I've had, I must say these EWQL guys should fix their piano. They own this certain Bosendorfer. Guys, it needs work. Your samples, your recordings are great but the piano itself needs voicing badly. For instance: B2. Terrible. That hammer has turned to STONE. Replace it. And that's not all. Much of the recorded samples give WAY too much noise at the highest dynamic levels. My guess is, ALL the hammers need either deep needling or replacement. Bosendorfers are _famous_ for lack of noise, just more volume as velocity goes up (but not your Bosendorfer: please re-voice and re-sample, all 19000+ samples (sorry)). Still, what you've got today is beautiful and worth the $500 (verses the $150,000 real thing).

Cheers!

i'm sure they'll see your post and govern themselves accordingly... :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:
 
Finally replaced contacts. Many Pix.

I am sorry it took me so long but I finally did open up the vmk-188+ and replaced ALL the rubber

contacts. I have several photos of the work progress and will show them in this series of posts.

This did fix all the dead note and dying note problems.

In a summary here is what I found about dead and bad velocity notes.

All of them had some kind of icky clear goo spread on them. The worst note, F3 was completely

dead, had the most goo. I do not think the goo is from degeneration of the plastic contact

material and I didn't cause it. I suspect the goo was applied by a technician to accomplish

regulation.

Reason I think so is this: when I got it all back together, with ALL new contacts the 'regulation'

of the keyboard was / is completely different and not in a good way. Suddenly the treble, from

about C5 to G6, thereabouts, has become weakened. And the treble all the way above it is now OK or

maybe somewhat accentuated. I will have to fix this. More later.

The whole disassembly, fix, reassembly procedure took me about 8 hours. I'm no pro tech and I was

taking photos and notes all along. The moral is, if you are going to do this replace ALL the

contacts while you have it open. They are cheap.

Other observations.

When I opened it up I immediately noticed one of the two two-wire connectors, the black and white

wires one at the A0 end of the keyboard, was disconnected. I made a point to re-connect it when I

reassembled, but it disabled the vmk's operation totally. No lights at all. I opened it back up,

disconnected that connector and was back in business. My Vmk runs ONLY from the USB connection.

The other external power port never worked out of the box. So this black / white connector may

have to do with the USB port somehow.

OK First pix is of the VMK top opened. This is after I removed every screw that was in the

external case. Some were unnecessary but it caused no problems.
 

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continued pix

more pix...
 

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continued

more pictures....
 

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continued pix and some text

Note the metal stiffener brackets with the black screw in the middle. The address a problem with this unit: key-down pressure pushes against the pc board that holds the rubber contact velocity switch-sensor. If the pc board bows away from the pressure source the velocity sensed will be to low.

Remember I noted loss of velocity from about C5 to A6? Well, the two stiffeners associated have stripped threads.
 

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continued

Notice how the little connector works here.
 

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continued

Notice the head of the Red screwdriver. It is right next to my original dead note, F3. I show a view of this rubber contact from a few angles. Note the 'goo' (best seen in the preceding post).

Also shown is how the action works. The moving part is of heavy sheet metal not plastic. May be iron.
 

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continued

Here is more on the action.
 

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Final with pix

Also, here are some views as I was removing the old contacts and replacing them. More 'goo' is visible here.

This is tedious work. We must assure the new contacts are firmly flat and flush with the pc board.

OK, End. I hope this helps other users.

I have a plan to fix the regulation, without goo, via software. More later.

Regards to all.
 

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One More Thing

I mentioned a fix for the regulation problem. Actually there are two. In my own case I found two or three of the support brackets (with black screw in pix) have one mounting screw that is stripped out. It's the one that is within the area of the moving key weight-arms.

Ok, that's the first thing to fix. I'll be looking for some liquid product to squirt into the stripped out thread holes. I assume there are some.

The second thing is to use software to balance out all the velocities. More later.

If you aren't familiar with regulation- it's a process used on acoustic pianos to get each note to sound with the same loudness for the same note striking force. Like if you were to play a chromatic run from one end of the keyboard to the other. You want each successive note to sound with the same volume- given that you are pressing each with the same force (or weight as in weight-technique). Regulation has to be done for each individual instrument. All pianos, and some synths like Fatar, need regulation no matter how fine they are.

Cheers!
 
Best thread ever!

This is a wonderful thread, I'm having problems with my Fatar VMK too and its a good thing to know that there's a spare parts available.
My problem is that sometimes the notes get "stuck". the key never sends "note off" message when released. This has started bugging me in the last 2 months more and more so I'm figuring the contacts must be wearing out or that they are dirty. The stuck note goes away sometimes with a new press and release of a key but sometimes it needs some good hitting before it releases the note. Lucky me the new contacts aren't expensive and there's a healthy stock of them available for purchase at The Midi Store

I'm also waiting to start the work of figuring out the "cross-talk" between the connected pedals in this keyboard, many have reported it and since I'm pretty capable electrician, I figured that I could resolve that issue and maybe make a post on this forum about the possible solution if I succeed.
 
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@ Icchan,

Did you solve the problems you mention here? I have not heard of pedal crosstalk. Don't know if have experienced it.

By the way, I am about to do the whole contact replacement job again. It's been 4 years and they have worn out.
 
Thanks very much for sharing this experience. I'm planning to replace the contacts on my VMK-188 to fix several dead notes and also look at the pitch mod joy stick which is sending random pitch bend data making it totally unusable. Wish me luck!
 
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