My old keyboard (of the synthesiser type)
was playing up. The power supply was dodgy. So I took it to bits to have a look and sure enough, discovered an iffy regulator.

Unfortunately, during the course of my investigations, my hand holding the meter probe slipped and I ended up shorting two contacts together, whcih caused a bit of a spark. (Turns out I'd sent 12V up the 5V line, which caused the logic circuitry to complain somewhat).

The keyboard then wouldn't fire up at all, and I couldn't find out what was wrong. So I sent it off to a proper repair place, who charged £40 an hour, spent 6 hours trying unsucessfully to find the fault (other than telling me about the 12V/5V thing) and phoned me to say it could take as long again and they couldn't guarantee to find it. or indeed be able to fix it if they did find it. So I cut my losses, sold it (described honestly) on ebay for about £200 and bought a new one.

Wouldn't have been so bad if had been a Casio Portasound but it was about 3 grand's worth!

(I had had 6 years and about 800 gigs out of it to be fair, so it paid for itself many times over, but it was still galling).

Apologies for lack of humour.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Thu 25 Oct 2007, 13:28, 7 replies)

Why is it....
I need a dictionary to read most of your posts.
( girlinthehole, Thu 25 Oct 2007, 13:30, closed)

thought you were talking...
a computer keyboard to begin with

"£40 to get it looked at? you're having a giraffe"

then I read on....
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Thu 25 Oct 2007, 13:37, closed)

Was it just me
Who thought you meant a QWERTY keyboard? I was wondering why you were so bothered about a £5 item, especially paying £40 an hour to get it fixed.
(Cuthbert Annihilator, Thu 25 Oct 2007, 13:37, closed)

Ah, yes
OK, all you computery types. I see your point. I've edited it.

And BGB - I can actually sympathise. I was at a presentation skills course yesterday, where most folk were from a medical/biochemistry background. One woman gave a talk on episiotomy during optimum vaginal birth or whatever the hell it was. I struggled to understand most of the words in the title.

Except "vaginal"...
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Thu 25 Oct 2007, 13:57, closed)

What is/was it?
And did you ever get it fixed?
(gordonjcp, Thu 25 Oct 2007, 19:18, closed)

It was
a souped up Kurzweil K2500. I sold it on ebay to a bloke in Oxfordshire, who thought he could fix it. I had bought a technical manual from the US, so threw that in with it.

Never did find out what happened after that.

I took out a lot of the souped-up-ness (ROM cards etc) which still worked and transferred them to its successor, a K2600, which I still own, and it's in perfect working order.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Fri 26 Oct 2007, 8:56, closed)

K2k6
What band do/did you play for? I know a few muso's, thought you might too.
(Scoopfoot loves lamp, Fri 26 Oct 2007, 14:26, closed)