I have a Roland FP-4F electric piano which I really like. It gets carried around quite a lot, mostly to The Dunblane for sessions (and the occasional gig!), but also to other sessions & gigs. Last week it started to have a problem with the control that mixes the rhythm and the piano sound (actually, I never use the rhythm, but well, the control’s still there), and I thought I’d better do something about it before it failed completely.
So I emailed Roland, ask asked them if they supplied spares for it. No response. Not surprising, really, because they want repairs to be carried out by their own technicians, or approved centres, but that’s at least an hour away, and I’d not have the piano for weeks. So I took matters into my own hands.
Fortunately, I have access to a reasonably well-equipped lab, with a decent sized bench on which I could take the machine apart. It (only!) has about 40 screws on the base, which I undid, and then it comes to pieces, as can be seen above. It took a couple of hours to take the appropriate circuit board out, de-solder the control and remove it, and attempt to measure exactly what sort of potentiometer it was. I eventually concluded it was a 20 KΩ linear potentiometer, and I even found the right one as manufactured by Panasonic. But instead of sending away for one (the website seemed to want one to order rather a lot of them) I bought a old fashioned one from Maplin in Stirling, and installed it, wiring it to the printed circuit board. (There was enough space!)
Re-assembling it was actually harder than disassembly – I had to take it even further apart. But it works, and I’m ready to play in a session on Sunday.
Cost of repair: £1.80 (for two potentiometers, only one of which I used), plus a total of about 7 hours work, including bussing it into Stirling, coming home for a saw to cut the potentiometer spindle down to a reasonable size, and travelling back to the Uni to finish the job. If I costed my own time, it wouldn’t be a bargain, but well….I’m partially retired, and I’ve always like mending things.
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