Floss Regularly

When we last saw my trusty JX-305 it was literally yesterday and I thought I was done with messing around with it. However, this morning I was reminded that when I first got it, it was pretty filthy, and in particular the keys were a huge mess. I had cleaned them up from the topside, but there's only so much dirt you can get out that way. In particular, the dirt that builds up between the keys tends to be basically inaccessible to this kind of cleaning.

And let's not forget the dirt at the back of the keys.

As much as I wish I could forget the dirt at the back of the keys.

Well, only one thing to do, let's pull it apart.

This is, thankfully, a pretty easy task. Or it would be, if Roland hadn't stuck one (1) screw underneath the main PCB, which requires completely removing it to access. Oh well, it's only another half dozen screws.

Speaking of many things, I can't get the keys off with the springs still attached, so off they come. Both the white keys...

And the black keys...

And a bunch of dog and/or cat hair, I guess. I'm pretty sure these springs are identical, but it pays to keep them separated just in case.

Also say hello to this friendly little ladybug taking a nap behind one of the keys.

I don't think I'll have to be too careful about waking it up.

Anyway, the keys aren't quite free yet, I need to remove a set of black plastic retention strips on the underside first.

Then the keys can start coming off, and yuck.

That is definitely some grime.

When it comes to this kind of grime, my go-to is always borax, with a little dish soap to help get things started. Alkaline cleaners really do an amazing job of chemically destroying oily schmoo like this.

And while we're cleaning the keys, the keybed frame could use at least a little dusting.

I didn't go bonkers on this part because it's largely out of sight, out of mind, and there's some grease on the grommets and at the back where the keys hinge that I don't feel like reapplying. So a quick blast with compressed air and a little vacuuming will get rid of most of the pet hair and dust.

And now that the keys have had a little swim, followed by a little shower, I can shake off the majority of the water and drop them back into place.

And a little bit of reassembly followed by a quick spit shine and hopefully this is the last I'll need to mess with this keyboard for quite a while.

But who knows what tomorrow will bring?

A Little Tact Goes A Long Way

When last we saw my trusty JX-305 I had pulled one of the main front panel boards to straighten up the potentiometers that had, over time, become bent and askew. For reasons that I will perhaps never understand, I didn't take this opportunity to replace the tact switches, perhaps because I had assumed they were functioning properly, or perhaps because I had forgotten that they most certainly were not.

Well, today I'm fixing that oversight. Thankfully it's not too hard to dig into this particular synth, but it does take quite a lot of screws to get there.

This one here is the right-side panel board, and contains most of the tact switches, including most of the most used tact switches, like the PTN/SONG, SHIFT and the patch number 3 button, which I guess is a pretty popular patch number. I bring these up because they were among the least responsive buttons on the whole synth, and the SHIFT button not working kind of blocks off a lot of functions, as you might imagine.

As per usual, it's out with the old and in with the new. I didn't take a lot of photos because I was powering through this one, but here's the left side panel with all the switches replaced.

And the combined pile of oxidized crustiness.

Then, as per usual, I just need to throw the boards and screws back in, shake things around until everything settles into place, and it's back up and running.

So why fix the JX-305 now? Well I've been practicing a song and while I'd usually just use one of my Reface keyboards to chill on the couch while playing, this particular song needs more than 37 keys. As it happens, the JX-305 is my lightest 61 key synth (despite having a pretty solid aluminum chassis), so it got conscripted into service as a slightly more awkward couch synth.

Let's Set Things Straight

And by "things" I mean the knobs on my JX-305.

They're a little bit out of line, particularly the knob for sustain, which is quite noticeably bent towards the keys.

These knobs had clearly taken a bit of a hit at some point.

And they're also kind of filthy, so let's dig inside.

First, the back comes off.

Then the main PCB is unscrewed and moved out of the way.

Then after unscrewing a few brackets we merely lift the control panel free from the... Son of a-

Ok, power switch comes out next, I guess.

Then we can finally pull the front panel board out.

As we can see, the pots are definitely filthy, and they've definitely been bent out of line. Those little legs are supposed to sit flush against the PCB.

I wasn't initially sure if these had been soldered askew at the factory, but looking at the back side it's clear that the solder joint had, at some later point, been deformed by the pins being levered up.

So that explains things.

Also just looking at this picture it seems I failed to notice that the pins themselves need resoldering. Excuse me a moment.

So let's see, where were we... Ah yes, so, flipping the board over, it becomes pretty clear that the pots are out of their proper alignment.

And some of them have even been hit hard enough to start to fold back the tabs on the bottom.

But once those tabs are pushed back into place, and once all the pins are resoldered (ahem, all the pins), things are looking much more straight.

Thanks to these refreshed solder joints.

Which are so shiny that they're basically impossible to photograph. Oh well.

Shoving things back into the case, we can see that the pots are aligned with the front panel much better than before.

And with the knobs on, everything is looking pretty much perfect.

Or at least as close to perfect as I'm gonna get it.

BBrraaiinnss

So it's that time again.

This JX-305 came up for sale with those four sweet words "For Parts or Repair".

The seller indicated that the synth stopped working after they had played a gig on a boat, in which they were forced to leave the synth out in some misty rain because they didn't have anything to cover it with. I was quite confident that the rain had nothing to do with the failure, so I made a bid and it arrived on my bench.

When I powered the synth on, it was indeed dead as a doornail.

The display was blank, none of the LEDs were lit other than the Beat light which was glowing orange (it's only ever supposed to be red or green in normal operation), and basically everything was unresponsive. Not a positive first step.

However, much like the MC-505, which this synth is based on, the CPU has a hard-coded bootloader that you can access by holding down the right keys when powering it on.

The magic combination is to hold down "Mute Ctrl" while powering the synth on, and then tap on "3/High Hat" a few seconds later.

Well that's looking better already. Let's see how far we can get with this.

Well, it's taking data, and...

Hmm, nope, no good. Well, that explains why the main processor isn't booting: if it can't write a firmware image it sure isn't going to be able to read it back either.

Having a peek inside, we can see some big flat-pack chips soldered down with our good friend lead-free solder.

This one in particular is the flash chip that holds the firmware, and I think it needs a little love. So, come along for the adventure and see where it takes me!

I promise it'll be fun. Or, well, it was for me at least.