PSR E 403 - Review applicable to other keyboards

by Alfred
(Middle Village NY)

Dear Yamaha Keyboard Guide Forum Participants: Following are some comments which may be of interest to you.

This is a review not applicable only to my PSR E 403, but to most other keyboards.

Some of us may believe - or better said “hope”- our keyboard problems may be relatively easy to solve ……….and indeed SOME OF THEM ARE! However, allow me to caution you that frequently MOST OF THEM ARE NOT!!

I have been gently trying to alert fellow participants of this Forum to think twice before attempting to dismantle their keyboards and here is some food for thought:
By all accounts - mostly because others have said so - I am a “handy fixer upper”. I’ve been tinkering with electronics for over thirty years but I know better than to “fly by intuition”.

First of all, I have no formal education in the subject, and while I have a basic knowledge of electronics, an impressive arsenal of tools and good basic electronic testing equipment, IT’S JUST NOT ENOUGH.

Today’s technical innovations make it mandatory to be very well versed in both theory and practice to correctly diagnose and repair keyboards, and, even at that, if one does not have the highly sophisticated testing equipment available - e.g. computer-linked testers - the likelihood is that somewhere along the exercise one’s efforts have to stop.

Unfortunately what may seem to be an easily correctable fault with a keyboard can frequently be the result of many possible internal circuit failures unsuspected by most of us. I’m one of the first to think of opening up my keyboard if a problem arises, but I can tell you, just one look at an exploded view of the innards is enough to give one pause!

The comments above are not to say you should refrain from posting your questions. To the contrary, KEEP THOSE QUESTIONS COMING, because in addition to us laymen, there must be a good number of EEE’s and Professional Technicians who participate in this Forum who can help us.

Peace!