Last year at this time, I was building my studio and acquiring gear at a pretty good clip.  Some of the new synthesizers I was buying were rackmountable. and I was a little turned off at the cost of buying a prebuilt rack to house them in.  After consideration, I thought maybe I could build one of my own.  It shouldn’t be hard.  It’s a freaking box.  It’s got four sides.  You have a saw and screwdriver, you should be able to do this.

I do have all the tools you would need to accomplish this, and I had a few minor woodworking projects under my belt already.  I had built a shitty platform for my washer and dryer.  I had built a couple of sunglasses racks as well.  I think I was ready to try this.  Spoiler alert, it’s not exactly cheaper to do it yourself, but the satisfaction sort of makes up for it (that’s always what they say, isn’t it?)

And so I built my first rack.  It was 12U rack with an extra shelf.

Oddly, the stain I chose was supposed to be a light grey (kind of like the floor) and was actually blue.  Whatever, it’s fine.  It’s not like once I started applying the stain I could just undo it.

And this rack served me pretty well for that year.  I outgrew it quickly, though, and I wanted more space.  I needed more space because I was starting to gather up rackmount effect units.  So I began making mental plans to build a second rack.  This old rack would then be dedicated to effects and the new larger rack would be all synthesizers.

The old rack had a capacity of 12U.  I decided to go big this time and bought 22U rails.  Another thing I didn’t like from v1 is that the floor and shelf of the rack are from some extra scrap wood I had around and this time I wanted the whole thing to have the same wood finish, so I bought extra panels to cut up.  I ended up using 3 of the 4 sheets, so my wood cost went up by only 50%.

I got by by using my 20v tools the first time, but the circular saw was pretty underpowered for the job.  More than once it stalled out cutting through the wood and it never seemed to keep a straight cut.  So this time I bought a high-power corded saw, which is an additional up-front cost, but will be used much more in the future, I’m sure.  I also have a corded drill and when I need that level of power, it’s very nice to have that option.  And the saw did a tremendous job.  i was able to cut the slant on both sides sheets at once, so they are perfectly matched.

I have wheels from a previous project that I can use, and I’m going to use pocket screws again because they seem really strong, and also because I have a lot of them on hand.  I’m going to double the number of screws I use for extra strength this time.  I’m not going to forgo the wood glue this time.  It makes a world of difference.  I have poly sealant from last time, but I didn’t think I had enough blue stain to cover the new larger size (48" high instead of 38"), so I bought some new stain.  This time, red.  Not red like cherry wood, I mean cherry RED.

Taking some cues from Nord Keyboards, for sure.

Once this is done, as is tradition, it’s only the start of the purchases.  All the equipment from the old rack will be moved to the new one, and that will work as-is.  but when I add more devices, I’ll need to add a second rack mixer.  There’s going to be more devices to power, but I already purchased a larger power strip for install from Woot, who listed one recently, conveniently enough.

Then, looking at the population of the old rack with the effect units that are piling up in my closet, I need to buy a new patchbay to route them.  I have a power switch that I had purchased a while ago from the same place I bought the Roland U-110 and my 32 channel mixer.  And additional power will be available from the power strip already installed in it.  Other than that?  Cables.  Bunches more cables.  Cables to connect the effect units to the patchbay, and maybe some mid-length cables to route between the synth patchbay and the effect patchbay.

And here’s the new rack:

With all the gear swapped out and organized

Of course, like every picture, it’s always out of date.  The FX rack now has a patchbay to route to the synth rack and an improved power switch.  The synth rack now has a new entry as well.  So now it’s time to update the 2024 studio purchase log.

A little over a year ago, my purchasing of keyboards for the studio was peaking, and I was grabbing whatever struck my fancy.  One of the things that came along at that time was a Kurzweil PC3.  It "had problems".  Professional diagnosis said that the main board was bad and would need swapped out.  So I left the device in my rack and waited for another PC3 to come along that needed repair so I could merge the two into one working device.

And it took over a year for something to appear.  This one was the PC3x, which is the 88 key version of the model I had – the 76-key version.  The description, along with demo video, said and showed that the display did not work.  And that was ok with me, because I had a display that did  work.  The asking price was $450, which is a little more than the $300 I paid for the first one, but if these things only appear once a year, I guess I have to get it and go.

I arranged to pick up the device the next day and explained I didn’t care about the screen, but I wanted to know if it had sound.  Time moved slowly and eventually, the seller said they couldn’t confirm if it had sound or not because the display problem prevented any testing.  Well, ok.  I’ll still take it.

And I really overpaid.  I didn’t get what they were saying if I wanted it, just come and get it.  And when I tried to pay them the $450, they were like, no, no, we don’t know if it works or not.  They wanted to give it to me for free.  I drove a hard bargain and gave them $300 instead.  Hindsight is painful, but I’m still ok.

First thing this morning, I started it up.  Initial diagnosis, the screen works.  There’s no backlight.  However, the device is stuck in a rebooting loop.  That’s the repetitive clicking the seller was hearing.  Later in the morning, I have it all disassembled and am running the built-in diagnostics.  The device spontaneously reboots when testing the RAM, but all other tests pass.  Audio can’t be tested because it relies on the RAM, so it reboots on that test as well. 

Ok, so let’s get device #1 and see what we can transplant.  I disassemble the 76-key version and take out the screen.  I figure it will be at least easier if I can see what I’m looking at while testing.  The backlight for the screen is hard-soldered to the main board.  Ugh.  I desolder both, then solder the working screen into the new 88-key.  I go to plug the display board to the main board and… fuck.  The ribbon cable is too short.  Because, duh, a 76-key board is not near as long as an 88-key.

Ok.  Plan B.  Let’s replace the backlight.  I disassemble the display and am very nervous because there’s like no wires to the screen.  It’s some kind of conductive rubber sheet that connects the circuit board to the glass screen.  Then I find out that there’s no EL sheet there – it’s just a big white box with two wires going into it.  I don’t know what that is or how it’s getting lit.  So I go drastic and cut the leads to the existing light and solder them up to an EL sheet I have.  I have to make significant modifications to the metal frame to accommodate the placement of the wires.  Lots of dremel work and hot metal.  This is spiraling out of control.  I get it all put back together, enough to fire it up and… no light.  That was a damn waste. 

Let’s step back a little bit and do some isolated testing.  I take the 76-key display and wire up the power with some extension wires.  I power up the board and the backlight comes on for a brief moment, then goes out.  Hmmm.  Maybe my old display is flaky too?  Or is it possibly a problem with power delivery?

I go back online and do more searches for replacement displays.  Like everything else PC3, there are NO replacement parts available anywhere.  But I found a post of someone who had fixed their backlight and actually provided pictures.  And the replies had even more good info.  Using this info, I bravely cracked open the box on the display board to find the light inside.  It’s not LED, it’s actually fluorescent (cold cathode fluorescent).  Weird, but you know, a lot of computer monitors used CCFL for backlight before LED became cheap enough.

I had cut the leads completely off, so I resoldered the leads back, then soldered that disassembled display to the 88-key board.  When I turned it on, I could immediately see that the bulb was only about a third lit and what was lit was extremely dim.  And like their full-size counterparts, this bulb had the telltale signs of age with the darkened ends.  This is replaceable.  And if I hadn’t found that post and the replies, I would have been simply stuck again.

A site called CFL Warehouse, stocks these bulbs, and they’re not expensive, like $11 each.  And shipping is obscenely cheap, like $2.  So I bought two.  Maybe I’ll fuck one up, and if I don’t, I can replace the bulb in the other display too.  And when parting out the remnants, that should be a decent selling point.

So for now, I’m waiting on parts, like I’m waiting on parts for two other devices sitting around.  And once that’s done, will I be able to go to the next step of swapping components or will both devices have different failures on the same board, making it all pointless?  That remains to be seen.

After updating my studio buying log for the last couple months, I thought I should take a moment and reflect on the journey so far and what the road ahead looks like.

The good news: I have not lost interest in the reconstruction effort for the old tracks.  Even though I’ve been working on them on and off for months now.  And the progress is fairly steady as well.  So far 29 tracks have been reconstructed, which I think is amazing.  There’s only maybe 8 left to do and of those, maybe 3 may have lost data or sounds that are impossible to source or recreate.  The progress is substantial enough that I purchased the device needed for yet a different recording from the era, done on gear not in the original studio.  Gear that was cutting-edge at the time but now is cheaply available.

And that’s sort of the roadmap for this month and next month.  This month is sort of paused on spending since homeowner’s insurance was due and it just feels prudent to keep my expenses level month to month.  But, there is a plan for the next phase.

The next phase obviously is new creations.  I’ve got a massive selection of new devices to work with now and there should be no wanting for any sounds for inspiration.  In order to make that next phase happen, I need to get all those dives out of the closet and set up for play.  That means I need a rack, maybe multiple racks.  There are ten keyboards in the closet right now.  I have my eye on a rack that will hold six of them, which might just be fine.

As far as repairing devices, I’ve done alright.  Most devices that I take in only need little changes.  Like the U220 on the table right now.  It had a completely dead battery and the power button got stuck in when I power it on.  After disassembling it, the plate that held the MIDI message light, which was also the frame for the power switch had become detached.  Just needed superglued back into place.  I think someone though the MIDI message light was a button and pushed it so hard it detached it from the frame.  The Kurzweil was a mystery that I returned to a couple of times and by random chance I seemed to have fixed it by changing the default startup patch.  My suspicion is whatever the previous default patch was had some bad configuration data in it and when it was loading that faulty patch, it caused the sound output settings to get botched.  The wonder of fully software-driven devices.  My Alesis QS8 started exhibiting audio problems after it warms up, so it’s relegated to a MIDI controller right now.  And the faders are still nasty, spewing garbage on the MIDI channel, so its time may be short altogether.

So in summary, the travel has been smooth and the road ahead looks clear and bright.  Barring any unexpected events, the year is looking positive.

Last weekend, I made a day and hit a bunch of pawn shops, specifically looking for keyboards.  I guess collecting CDs was getting too hard, and collecting CD players was too infrequent, so keyboards is now what I collect.  I had two a couple weeks ago, now I have five.  I’ll figure out something.

So, to keep that story short, I made a deal at the first place I went and the rest of the day was pretty crappy.  For some odd reason, my phone could not keep a GPS signal, so my trip was cut short.  No idea what was up with the GPS, but I hope it’s not a regular happening.

So anyway, at this first shop, they had a keyboard out front – a Roland D70, which is a 76 key synth from 1990.  Not bad.  The original price was $720 and it was marked down to $450.  ehhh, not that great.  But there was a sign nearby that said anything on that table, make an offer. Hmmm.  I did a quick price check and the D70 sells for about $500.  Ok, let’s at least check it out.

I ask to try it and the first thing I see is that the MIDI thru jack is ripped out.  I have no idea how something like that happens.  Not a deal breaker because I wouldn’t need that port, but it is a negotiation point.  It powers up and I start testing the keys.  To my amazement, some of the keys don’t work.  And when I say they don’t work, I don’t mean they don’t make a sound when you press them, I’m saying you could not physically push them down.  Five keys had that problem, all black keys.

The store got a little busy right then, so I had an extended period to consider what level of effort a repair would be.  Absolute worst case, find a dead donor board and swap the keybed.  The electronics seemed fine, the issue was only mechanical.  Time to barter.

Know this about me:  I don’t haggle.  I like to be a people-pleaser.  I don’t like the discomfort of potentially insulting the person who is offering me a service or product.  So I continually tell myself, I don’t need this board.  There’s no reason not to walk away.  I set my price at $250.  Now remember, this is a pawn shop, so it’s likely the person pawning it only got like $100 at most for it, so my price is still giving them a profit.  However, that price was lower than their lowest time-based discount price was.

The salesman came back and I explained the problem and the level of effort I’d have to take to see if it’s even repairable and told him I could only offer $250.  He immediately said, no, I already have $400 into it.  Well, that was quick.  So I was like, ok, I can’t take it.  But I can tell you there’s a repair shop nearby that could fix it for you if you want to get its full value.  I know a pawn shop doesn’t want to sell good stuff; they want to turn over product with as little hassle as possible.  Fuck, they don’t even clean things they put on the floor.  Such a simple thing to increase the value, and they don’t.

He changes his tune quickly, "let me ask the manager."  Yup, just like a car dealership.  However, unlike a dealership, he came back and said, manager says he’ll take $250.  I didn’t have to fight wave after wave of bosses to get the deal.  So, deal done and back home to see what’s up with this thing.

To get to the point, this keyboard had what I’d heard about in repair videos but had never seen yet: the Roland Red Glue.  This glue, in keyboards from 1985-1990, would melt in heat and humidity, loosening the key weights and running into the internals.  The five broken black keys all had their weights fall and that is why they could not be pushed down.  It’s quite funny to me to think that this board might have originally worked well, but because pawn shops suck, they might have left the A/C off at night to save a couple bucks and caused this problem all on their own.  I love that sort of justice.  But anyway, the problem was mine now.

I did some research and found that the usual fix is to soak the keys in drain cleaner to dissolve the red glue and then reattach the weights with epoxy glue.  The recommendation was to use a drain cleaner with lye.  Well, guess what, you can’t get that anymore.  Why?  Goddamn methheads.  Lye is used in making meth.  So I picked up some other cleaner that had some of the chemicals that are associated with lye and hoped that would do the job.

The keys soaked overnight and while it did appear to dissolve all the running glue and freed the weights from the five black keys that had their weights fall, the other key weights were still rock solid.  Solid enough that I broke the plastic on a key trying to pry the weight out.

So the next day, I spent a lot of time scrubbing the keys, to get whatever glue was left (which had turned black) and planned my next move.  In one video, the person said the glue was susceptible to high pH and tested his soaking solution before starting to show it was high pH.  Well, I can make a high pH solution with some pool chemicals.  So I took the broken key as my new sacrificial tester, bought some alkalinity increaser from the pool store, and soaked the key in a solution with a pH off the charts of my pool test strips.  After a few hours, the key weight was as firmly attached as ever.

So at this point, I think I’m just going to fix the five black key weights, buy a replacement key for the one I broke, and put it all back together.  Some part of me says it’s leaving a job unfinished, but another part of me is saying, those other key weights are on there.  And I’m not leaving my keyboards in a non-climate controlled environment anyway, so they should remain solid.  I dissolved all the excess glue that had seeped out, so the only glue left is what is behind the weight.

The replacement key arrived quicker than I expected.  And immediately upon opening, I check it.  Red Glue.  Ok, off into a drain clearer bath overnight.  The next day, I scrubbed the dissolved glue off and installed the key.  I had been waiting for this and had installed every other key in advance.  I put everything back together and powered the board up.

No sound.  Further, the display was completely garbled.  Actually, this is ok.  I’ve heard that you might need to do a memory erase and then go through a tedious process of transmitting data to the device to restore it.  So I download the data file, get the utility program and try.  And try again, and again.  We’re not seeing any success here.  I read a couple more posts about the process and someone comments on turning off a memory protect switch.  Oh yeah, that would help.  A few more tries.  More reading.  Eventually what worked for me was navigating to a system menu, enabling sysex receive, and setting the device id to 17 (why I don’t know).  But then I had sound.

Unfortunately, some of the keys weren’t responsive.  I was too optimistic about their integrity and I probably shouldn’t have been.  So, everything comes apart again and I disassemble the keybed completely again.  Now I have to clean the membrane contacts and pads with alcohol, which wasn’t really as bad as I thought it might me.  I put on some music and went at it.  Two albums later, I was done and reassembling everything.

I had sound and now I had keys that work.  Some of the black keys were more sensitive than others, but that’s livable.  I can tweak any obnoxiously incorrect velocity in the sequencer if I need to.  And that actually wraps up the repair and restore of this device.

In the meantime, I’m buying another keyboard next weekend, which might need some attention, and also the keyboard that started this buying frenzy, the Equinox, needs some care.  The pitch wheel is wonky and I think some of the faders are dirty and spamming the bus.  And I know the battery is low on that, too.  So, no shortage of future projects, let’s hope they don’t become as involved as this one.