Yamaha P-95B – No Sound – Repairs

8Feb/260

Yamaha P-95B – No Sound – Repairs

Have been looking for a midi-enabled nice-sized weighted-key keyboard for a while and saw a P-95 on FB Marketplace going for AU$500. I felt it was a bit steep for a pretty-old piece of kit, so I googled a little... initially just to confirm it had MIDI ports.

I then stumbled across this absolute cracker of an ad for a P-95 at a local music shop:

Turns out Music Swop Shop in Carlton is a treasure-trove of 2nd-hand music equipment... and they'd decided this unit wasn't worth repairs. Likely SMD repairs, they say?...

The unit was lugged home and open-brain-surgery ensued. The keyboard would react to note presses... I could see that record would flash until a you started playing... so the keys were operational and the panel seemed ok. The main issue had to be voltage/audio amplification? It turns out that the X8828 Amplifier Board seems to fail a lot... to the point where there are multiple "send it to us and we'll fix it" services!

I popped the board out of my unit and ... it looked bad. That crap cleaned off, but I was getting a lot of shorts across a LOT of the shitty little blue electrolytic caps? This turns out to be quite a common problem! That thread is hilarious, and I must add my repair to it. So many people with so many dried up dead caps.

With some of the caps, a slight touch from the top-side would actually push the leg through and detach the pad on the bottom-side! Hacks were put in place, thanks to enough space being available inside the piano.

All caps were replaced, for good measure. When reinstalling everything you need to BE VERY CAREFUL with the ribbon cables. I don't know if it was me or the previous repair-man, but the silver wires were starting to de-laminate at the ends where the ribbons plugged into the sockets. If you then put them in at an angle you could risk folding the silver back up on itself. Just be very gentle and precise when putting it all back together... otherwise you'll do what I did and dismantle it 10 times as the unit failed to respond every time I re-assembled it!

Anyway... I eventually got the ribbons in cleanly and then it all just worked perfectly!