Post by karl on Dec 22, 2008 18:35:18 GMT -5
My Electro 2 73 Key started having missing note problems about two months ago. After lugging it around to gigs for about a year, I figured it needed cleaning. So out came the screwdrivers. Here is what I found:
It was not Nord's fault. The fault lies with Fatar, The manufacturer of the keydeck.
After taking the key deck apart down to the little rubber key cups, I found really, really tiny solder balls stuck all over the circuit board. One of these had worked itself under the rubber and caused the problem. I have confirmed with a friend in the manufacturing industry, that the solder balls are a result of the new lead free solder being used. The melting point of this solder is much higher than lead based solder.The boards get so hot that the solder will actually stick to parts of the board that have no copper traces. What is really scary is that if these solder balls fall onto the leads of integrated circuits the results can be very bad.Anyway, I cleaned it all up and now it works just fine.
Karl
It was not Nord's fault. The fault lies with Fatar, The manufacturer of the keydeck.
After taking the key deck apart down to the little rubber key cups, I found really, really tiny solder balls stuck all over the circuit board. One of these had worked itself under the rubber and caused the problem. I have confirmed with a friend in the manufacturing industry, that the solder balls are a result of the new lead free solder being used. The melting point of this solder is much higher than lead based solder.The boards get so hot that the solder will actually stick to parts of the board that have no copper traces. What is really scary is that if these solder balls fall onto the leads of integrated circuits the results can be very bad.Anyway, I cleaned it all up and now it works just fine.
Karl