Digital Piano Repair Near Me

[Custodio Groves]

Howevernothing (and particularly in the world of consumer electronics!) lasts forever and after plenty of playing or generally standing the test of time, components do wear out, short circuit or simply stop working.

Unlike their acoustic cousins, digital pianos have a significantly shorter lifespan. An acoustic instrument may last between 50 to 100 years and longer with restoration, a digital piano is likely to last 5-15 years. This difference is reflected in the price of purchase and the residual value, whilst acoustic pianos generally hold their notional value you can expect a digital piano to have lost 60-70% of its initial value after 5 years.

For the most part, a well kept and high quality digital piano from major brands such as Casio, Kawai, or Yamaha will generally last 8-15 years on average. During this time, small issues may be repairable such as failing sensors, speakers buzzing, or issue with broken sockets such as the power jack or headphones. That being said, we have seen digital pianos 25 years and older that are still in full working order.

The good news is the manufacturers know this shelf life and as such, most digital pianos are given warranties of 2-5 years. After this time, you may still be able to get the instrument repaired if you can get the spare parts and find an electronics engineer who can service it for you. It then becomes a matter of deciding on the economics of repair.

For instruments not from the major manufacturers this can be even worse, you may not be able to sell your instrument at all. As an example, a Gear4Music Portable Piano at 229 has a Trade-in price with Gear4Music of 76.20 in excellent condition and full working order*. This means it loses 67% of its value almost immediately.

An electronic engineer call-out can cost 100-180 depend on where you live plus parts if it can be fixed. You need to careful assess this cost against the cost of replacement. At Millers we want to try and avoid waste where possible so we will take instruments, even those not working and try to repair and recycle them as part of our Sustainability programs

If your digital piano has stopped working, the first step is to try to rule out obvious issues yourself. This may be as simple as the fuse in the power supply going, or a cable breaking, but could equally as easily be a software corruption, or small component failure.

The second point to be made here is that piano tuners and technicians are very different from those who repair digital pianos. Generally speaking, most piano tuners and technicians only focus on acoustic instruments. Digital pianos have specialist components and often require specialist tools to diagnose and repair This is a specialist job that a specialist company will have to undertake. We recommend our friends at Puretech Solutions.

We have been doing keyboard repair work since the early eighties. We have the expertise and repair knowledge that can only be gained from our many years of hands on experience with electronic keyboard and digital piano repair.

We stock schematics for hundreds of models, as well as a good solid inventory of spare parts.Our vast full-time experience of over 35 years while working in the Portland Oregon area means we can repair your most difficult repair issues at a minimum of time and cost.

We have over the years performed repairs and service on almost every make and model of keyboard out there. These days we mostly see the newer offerings in for repair from companies like Roland , Yamaha, Korg, Kawai and Casio. However we do also still provide service on all the great digital keyboards that companies like Kurzweil and the now defunct Ensoniq put out. While parts are getting harder to find for some of the older keyboards we still despite that fact perform quite a few successful repairs on them.

As I mentioned above we mostly see the newer offerings these days but since we have been doing electric and digital keyboard repair for a very long time we as well have repaired and still do repair good number of Fender Rhodes Stage and suitcase pianos along with our fair share of the Wurlitzer 200A electric pianos.

Common symptoms of keyboard contact issues are notes or keys that do not sound at all, notes that sound loudly or at full velocity, keyboard notes that sound intermittently and just about everything in between.

The solution to the problem varies. The first option and the most desirable if the keyboard has much age on it is to replace the contact boards if the keyboard contact boards are available and relatively inexpensive this is the best way to go as it cuts down considerably on the labor cost involved with the repair of keyboard contact issues. The new contact boards come from the factory with new key contacts already installed.

The next best solution if the contact boards for your keyboard are too expensive or not available is to replace the contacts and clean the contact boards. The reason to replace the contacts rather than cleaning them is the labor to clean the keyboard contacts is generally at least double the cost of the contacts and it makes for a more reliable repair.

The last and least desirable option to remedy keyboard contact note issues is to clean both the keyboard contacts and the contact boards. I say this is the least desirable because it is not always successful, but sometimes it is the only option available particularly on older vintage keyboards

Of course if your keyboard is relatively new then then the keyboard contact boards and contacts can usually be spot cleaned with good success, that is unless you have spilled something on it as that would be a whole other kind of keyboard repair situation.

Typically due to the complexity of the keyboards and the fact that often several layers of circuit boards and the keyboard assembly need to be removed to get to the contacts this is not a job I typically recommend you take on yourself. If you do decide to take it on be very careful in regards to the cleaning materials you use as using the wrong cleaner can have disastrous results.

If you had a Yamaha keyboard with sticking keys, stuck keys, or sluggish keys it used to be that you could have a new keyboard installed in your unit for just the cost of the labor regardless of its age. Unfortunately that program has come to an end. There are way too many models of Yamaha keyboards affected to list them all here, but a good many of them were in their Clavinova line.

Yamaha is a good company and the stepped up to the plate to take care of the customers who own their keyboards for a number of years after discovering the issue with the plastic used in the keys causing them to stick.

The sticking Key issue on Yamaha keyboards was caused by the plastic keys warping over time. These days there are two options the first being to replace the keys as they develop problems. This is a cost effective approach if you only have a few sticking keys.The second is to replace the keyboard assembly. Replacing the keyboard assembly is the better of the two options if you can afford the cost of the new updated keyboard assembly as it eliminates the issue all together and if you have a large number of sticking keys on your Yamaha keyboard it is usually a more cost effective solution to the sticking key issue.

Another symptom associated with keyboard keys that are broken in the back is keys that randomly pop loose. Also with a broken key sometimes the key will have lost its action usually because the break has allowed the key spring to pop loose.

The resolve to the issue of broken keyboard keys is of course to yard the whole thing apart and replace the offending keys. The difficulty to do this varies quite a bit from keyboard to keyboard some can be done in less than an hour and others can take a couple hours by the time you get all the circuit boards an the keyboard assembly removed to change the broken key on the keyboard.

Sticking keys on many Roland keyboards and Kurzweil keyboards are generally a result of broken key weights (hammers) in the hammer action of the keyboard assembly. The key weight hammer action generally takes quits a beating and over time the plastic first cracks and the entire weighted end of the hammer breaks loose. This can result in keyboard keys that stick, keyboard keys that get stuck, and sluggish keyboard keys.The ends of the keyboard hammers are essentially a big chunk of lead so if you have any of the issues above it is best to get it addressed as soon as possible as if that chunk of lead gets into the keyboard circuits you can end up with even bigger problems.

The resolve of course replace the hammers on the offending keys and very likely on a few others as well as inevitably when we get in there and open things up we find there are other hammers on the verge of letting loose as well.

If you can afford it of course the best option is to replace all the hammers all at the same time as over time it is the most cost effective solution particularly if you have a heavy hand when you play.Short of that the next best option would be to replace all the hammers in the mid-section as it almost always gets the most use on a keyboard.

The Model groups that I am aware of that are afflicted with the sticking key issue are the Gp series such as the Suzuki GP-32 and the HG series such as the Suzuki HG425E as well as the Suzuki SPS and Suzuki SS-100 I am sure there are likely a few other afflicted models other that what I have listed here as well.

If you look the problem up on the internet you will find several Rube Goldberg solutions to the sticking key problem prevalent in several models of Suzuki keyboards. These solutions mostly involve pulling all the key sections and the pivot rods and then meticulously reducing the pivot rod diameter by sanding the seven hammer pivot rods down one at a time while these solutions will work relatively well in the end they are extremely time consuming and difficult to achieve.

There is a better solution out there .. we have access to a coated rod kit for the affected Suzuki keyboard models. The rod kit is already the right diameter and as it is coated so it is a much slicker surface than you would end up with in the end from sanding the old rods down.

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