Yamaha P-45B - Very weird problem - all Ds misplaying

by Dave Patterson
(Thailand)

The problem is basically this: one day the piano was working fine, then the next day I sat down to play around a bit and it started putting out these weird, very UNmusical sounds. I experimented around to see what was going on, and it seems confined to the D notes, all of them, and only when played in combination with a slightly higher note - that is, the D will play ok by itself, but when I play the D with D#, E, F or F# together, the D sound turns into a white-noise (or black..) sound like a foghorn or something - blaaaa - somewhat oddly, I can play the D with a G or any higher note, or any lower note right down to the next D and the distortion is not there, and D octaves, even 3-4 Ds together, play fine - it's just when I play any of the Ds with a close higher note such as D-F or D-F# that it distorts like this (but of course those are very very common combinations of notes, so this pattern gets played frequently). And all the Ds are exactly the same, but all the other keys are fine. Very weird. There was no 'trauma', I 'bang' a bit but treat the piano well - it's a P-45B model, new about 18 months ago.

Any ideas about what might have caused this, or any 'fixes' short of taking it to the shop for a 'diagnosis and treatment' would be appreciated.
(I live in Thailand, and the weather was a bit rainy and humid before the problem, but then that is very common here and I have never had any problem like this before.)