Tue Jan 18, 2022 7:43 am
For anyone considering purchasing a new keyboard because their present keyboard has a cipher problem caused by a bad contact strip, replacing the contact strips in my Fatar keyboard was far easier that I expected.
I was able to purchase these inexpensive strips ( $5 per octave) from Classic Midi in Canada. Each strip has 12 contacts except for the top octave that has 13 contacts. Installing a contact strip was as easy as pulling the old strip out and replacing the new one. The strips have tiny little plugs on them that fit neatly into little holes on the keyboard circuit board. No solder or glue is required.
I'm sure these strips are available all over the Internet (they all look the same) but I didn't want to take the chance that there might be a slight or subtle difference between manufactureres that probably all use the same strips.
The crude strips have bubble like contacts that are squeezed flat then a key is depressed. I'm not complaining about having to purchase/install these contact strips because the keyboard is 2008 vintage and the keys have been probably depressed tens of thousands of times. The contact trips are a quantum less expensive that a keyboard and as it turns out, easy to replace. As a precaution against becoming obsolete, I purchased five octaves worth of strips should another key contact become problematic.
The biggest issue was actually trying to find out what my cipher problem was actually being caused by. Since the problematic keyboard was second from the bottom. I had to remove the top two to get to the third keyboard. In the interim, I reinstalled the top two keyboards and reprogrammed the new keyboard positions to access the correct division. Division 3 and 4 were accessed by the third and now top keyboard. After repairing the contact strip and returning it to the console, it was an easy procedure to reassign the four keyboard to their appropriate divisions.
Antoni