There is a special compound available specifically for repairing these worn pads. Caig Caikote 44. It works very well when used properly. I've used it on synth keyboards and other carbon membranes. You must let it dry thoroughly before reassembling.
Had One back in 80's bought in Chicago in USA, brand new and after I exchanged in my many trades...many years out of sight ..it has return to me.. and that one will be kept. It was part of my Musical venture when teen. Great video. Thanks!
This YAMAHA PORTASOUND PSS-680 was my second keyboard, in the 80s, where I practiced Musical Composition. Currently I still use it (and I have two) despite having a Recording Studio with a lot of modern equipment.
The reason why no kid's talk of keyboards or synthesisers today is because everything you need to make music is already in a Digital Audio Workstation. (DAW) software like Ableton, Cubase, Fruityloops etc.. And anything else you need you can just buy plugins. So, kid's of today making music it's already built in there for them. Gone are the day's walking into town on a Saturday looking in Dixons, Tandy's and other musical shops. I use to love it back in the early 90's having a play on different synths and keyboards. 🤘
Hi Vince...i use REMOTE RESTORE to restore flex boards of remotes and controllers it's carbon paint in spray... i spray a bit in a little container and use a paint brush to redo the pads ! works amazingly !
For the conductive buttons, try thinning a blob of silicone sealant with lighter fluid until it's like a thin paint then add graphite powder until the consistency thickens a little. Scratch the faulty pad with sandpaper, clean with IPA then apply a thin coat of your conductive silicone paint.
Don't silicone sealants off-gas acetic acid when they cure? I've never tried this method, though I wonder whether using a rubber cement like copydex might be a bit better in that regard.
Amen to that! Better bodge wires! Thicker, esp with physically broken pcb's and much better amperage can go thru braid (not rly needed here obv, but numerous uses for higher amperage circuits!)
I had one of these back when they came out (I was in Secondary School). Amazing keyboard. Learnt how to finger drum with it, but the blue pads were the first things to die. Great job restoring it!
I had one. I've been spending many hours a day when I was 15 playing guitar over the backing tracks I recorded with it. Super useful. And music is still my job after 30 years, so yes, I suppose it was actually useful. Thanks for sharing this, dude!
For the drum pads, best option I found was to use kitchen foil. Use a paper hole punch to get the perfect size, glue shinny side of the tin foil to the 'middle' contact as you ONLY need one of these on each of the pad, (just the one contect in the middle). Glue wise, the green pritt stick that glues everything including metal is what I used, leave for 24hrs to dry just for good measure. Depending how much you use the keyboard you may find the start/stop pad might loosen just a tad if you use the drums and record a lot, it will still work though. BTW the space between contact and board is so tight that cutting off the middle contact which I have done, and replacing them with a brand new one can cause some to continuously touch, its not like a TV remote gap but a hairs width tight. Wish someone could come up with a 3D printed replacement that has space to use any modern day console controller contact.
I wish I'd known this years ago!! however, bought a roll of 'natural' slug repellant from 'one below' for £1 - a roll of thin copper tape. just need to find my hole punch and I can start fixing the glorious mess that is my pss-680. the tape is as wide as your average roll of selotape, so, should be able to punch a ton of holes in it and fix stuff without too much effort.
Wow! Brought back some memories when you hit the demo button there! I had 1 of these when I was younger. It had a quite nice FM synth section and was my first venture into synthesis ha Biggest secret to this as a relatively cheap home keyboard is that it also had midi ports. I had mine hooked up to my Atari St and used as a controller keyboard for other synths for a few years. Great video!
Nostalgia trip really. I had a buddy many many many years ago, he was showing off his synthesizer skills all the time. All the kids would just gather round whenever he would bring his Yamaha to school.
@29:50 if you're concerned with false presses try small strips of aluminum cut to shape of the pads only and a very small dab of glue on one side to adhere to the pads. I did this on several of the tamagotchis I repaired on my channel. Those membranes are still working really well.
Thanks Shawn, I was thinking of gluing just onto the pads, but I thought they might have more chance of coming astray than a whole section of copper tape. I have since bought some carbon pads in different sizes and silicone glue, hopefully this may be a lasting solution 👍👍👍
@@Mymatevince no matter what, you worked around the problem to provide a solution. Anyone can recommend an improvement, but the initial work is what's important. Well done Vince!
14:49 Vince, for faders and carbon track switches you should be using the green DeoxIT, not the red one. The red one will deoxidize the carbon oxide layer (there are some questions about that) and we don't want that;). The red one will work for now, but you are shortening the lifespan of that volume fader. EDIT: The green one also has some lubricant for faders or you can even get a dedicated fader grease. It's also safe with plastic parts. I've seen some videos about old audio receivers being doused with the red DeoxIT and then some composite material boards simply disintegrating.
For plastic safety the bigger difference is between the thin solvent-containing products (D-5 and F-5) versus the thicker non-solvent containing ones (D-100 and F-100). The former are pretty much just the latter, but diluted in a solvent that makes it work in an aerosol can and get more evenly distributed without using a ton of it. The solvent is, unfortunately, not safe for all plastics.
Thanks Omega Mark, I was told about this before so I have just purchased the DeoxIT Fader aerosol from Amazon, £26, but hopefully it will last a long time 👍👍👍
@@Mymatevince Vince, use the F100 whenever possible on these faders and carbon tracks. The aerosol is for tight spaces, flushing action and has very little lubricant. That F100 is for longer term solutions, as it better stays in place and gives fader movement a better feeling. Didn't try their fader grease, but you need something good quality for some pots and faders (especially in old audio equipment). I hope you got the one with the old style straw that allows for better control. The new one with that big plastic on top and bigger diameter straw is atrocious due to overspray and it leaks all over the place. I'm surprised they still sell these. They also have DeoxIT Gold for plated surfaces (gold plated (and other precious metals) fingers, etc.).
@@Omega_Mark Not sure which one it is as the pics on Amazon are not always identical to the one you get. I did see the Gold stuff for sale too, looks nice. I'm a big fan of DeoxIT so looking forward to receiving the fader version. Cheers again for the help👍
According to the Argos catalogue of Autumn/Winter 1988, says on page 281, item 17, that the RRP was £249.99, but they were selling it by then for £199.95. Looking through old Argos PDF catalogues are always a nice place to grab old prices from here in the UK.
The "weird thing" that happens on the left side of the keyboard is because you have it in chord/accompaniment mode where you can play with different accompaniment styles. I had a Yamaha PSS-170 as a kid. That thing is an absolute BEAST! :D
Just checked when your Walkman video was (as that was one of the first I saw, I think you were in the low 10k's or maybe less in terms of subs) and it was 4 years ago! Can't believe how time flies. Glad to see you/your channel are doing well mate, always enjoyable to watch and taught me tons.
With the loose power supply DC plug, if it isn't the original power pack that came with the unit, you might find the hole in the DC plug has a different size than the pin in the socket. Common sizes are 5.5mm x 2.1mm or 5.5mm x 2.5mm. The larger one can fit on the smaller pin but will feel loose and may not make contact at all. There are also adaptors available to go from one size to another, search "2.5mm DC Plug to 2.1mm DC Socket Power Adaptor" or "2.1mm DC Plug to 2.5mm DC Socket Power Adaptor". The different sizes are to do with the current handling of the plug, 2.1mm is usually for low current devices (like CCTV cameras) pulling only an amp or so. 2.5mm is designed to carry a couple of amps or more.
I remember a carbon paint that came in a very small jar for repairing the membrane buttons on remote controls. As I recall it worked pretty well but took a long time to dry.
Had a bust one of these years ago. It just went a bit loopy. I think these days I'd stand a chance of fixing it but back then I was clueless. I even saw one outside someone's house next to the bins a few years back. Wish I'd grabbed it.
You can make your own CA glue kicker out of 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda and 1/4 cup of purified water. You can also spray CA glue with alcohol and it functions as a kicker. The baking soda route is better because it actually makes the glued joint stronger. For fixing worn down carbon, the MG Chemicals Rubber Keypad Repair Kit works perfectly and it's a long time solution.
I had a problem with my guitar hero controller's fret buttons which weren't registered every time. I just bought "remote control rubber buttons" in pack with glue. Those conductive rubber pads really made controller work again. Look them up :) I didn't play on the controller for 100 hours, but the glue really set them well. Of course you will have to change them again after some time, but that shouldn't happen just after few hours of playing ;)
Thanks azielok, I have just bought some from eBay and also a wide selection of carbon pads. Hopefully when it comes through I can glue them on and this will be a lasting repair. Cheers for letting me know what to look up 👌👍
You can get keypad conductive paint for painting on the existing pads. I've had to do that with two drum machines so far and those have twin pads for velocity sensing.
Hey Vince, I don't know if you're still monitoring these comments, but in the past I have used that aluminum tape that you can get in the HVAC department of your local hardware store and just cut little squares of it, I didn't even round them off, and stuck them onto the membrane contacts.Or I guess you could get a small punch and punch out a bunch of round ones. I haven't tried it on a keyboard, but it has brought several of my remote controls back to life and seems to adhere surprisingly well. I fixed my Sony amplifier remote about 2 years ago and it is still going strong. Plus it will add a bit of thickness to the membranes if you think they are worn down. Cheers
Nice repair. For the power input, I wonder if it would have been worth mounting a power socket on the case, cutting away the board section where the power input was, then running wires from the input jack to the board.
I'm glad I came across this video - brought back a lot of memories. Back in High School, we had the next model up the 780. Not that I was any good on the keyboard, but, I always loved these machines. I ended up buying a Yamaha PSR-47 when I started working that I tried to learn to play but, can only play a little bit. I managed to acquire a PSS-480 for my eldest son from a car boot sale for £3 then I managed to get myself a Yamaha PSR-4500 from Ebay.
The PSS-51 was the last one of these wonderful machines (released around 1992 or something). It was the successor to the PSS-790 and -795...but with 80 rhythm styles instead of 50. All these three machines worked with 12bit AWM samples and had a vector stick to kind of "morph-mix" between up to 4 single sounds...while the PSS-680 (and its more colorful later revision PSS-780) had a 2-operator FM synthesis tone generator.
@@sauermusicDE i managed to have play with one of the model before the 51, it might have been the 790. which had the vector stick. I linked it up to the computer to do MIDI, and you can use a master keyboard with the full size keys to record into its sequencer too.
I had one in the early 90s. A fun key board/drum machine. Really came into its' own when coupled to a DAW (Music X on an Amiga) . Copy n paste a track then detune that using a a tiny amount of pitch bend. Sounded great.
Great fix I have in the past used a very soft HP pencil and had no issues with it failing later on. I noticed near the socket you repaired where the screw holds the board down it looked like a track maybe cracked near the fixing hole might be worth checking just incase it is open circuit. Time stamp 2.56 near the screw if you look at the video.
We have this keyboard, at work it was donated. I work in a disabled day centre, where I do music with them. Our one still works, and we plug all the instruments guitars and synths, though a small pa and have a jam Tuesday afternoons. Our drummer, plays the donated drum kit over the top. For a retro keyboard it's got some nice, sounds and settings on it.
Hiya Vince. You can get Carbon conductive paint, maybe it would work better than the silver paint? Worth a try just to see what this carbon paint is all about. Another enjoyable video. Cheers. PS. Farnell seems to sell it.
I have a Pss680, bought off ebay with a blown audio IC, changed it & now working. It's a good keyboard, only thing I wish it had was full size keys. I have used a pencil to repair worn out carbon pads, it lasts quite a while before needing to be done again.
I used to own one of these. Totally loved it. You could record 6 tracks of music and would loop your creations. Even made a sick little G-funk track on it. A bit of a gem, even though it sounds awful by todays standards. The FM synthesiser was great fun too Turn up the feedback to get some really narly sounds.
I’ve used aluminum foil cut to the shape of the carbon pads, and silicone glue to stick them on, to fix a remote control where some of the buttons stopped working. Great fix Vince. Another wonderful video. Best wishes from the USA,
I had the PSS 790 as a kid, my friend across the road had the 680, he played better than me though. Great repair, never seen underneath them drum pads before, loved it Vince.
These old keyboards have a certain charm. I did a similar repair on the power connector and headphones jack of my Roland E15, which I bought used. Luckily there was no circuit board damage in that case, but just some cracked solder joints. So just resoldering these connectors was enough to get it fixed.
Haha I’ve got one of these I still use for nice lo fi crunchy sounds and you’re right about kids don’t talk about keyboards when everyone had one in the 80s coz computer games and vr are more popular now
Never used a Yamaha keyboard, though in 1995, I got a Casio CTK-500 digital keyboard for Christmas. I also had the older Meccano brand Erector sets. One speaker went out on the Casio, so I found a working speaker, but it was smaller than original; so I stripped and added extra wire between smaller speaker and original circuit board wiring, then made a custom bracket using Erector set parts to reach original speaker mount holes and the 'X' made by Erector set held the smaller speaker in place. Keyboard worked. That repair and modification I did at 17, with no electronic repair knowledge.
Nice job! I had the same power jack issue on a Sega Genesis, still working strong 10+ years later. I also have the PSS-480 from this series, they are actually really powerful synths!! If you plug this in to an external audio system, even just a stereo console, they sound SSOOO much better than through the small built-in speakers.
Another great video Vince! For this sort of repair I have successfully used small disks cut from thin cooking foil (aluminium foil), stuck in place with superglue.
Hallo VInce, for repair the trace like this i use a used solder-wick. The wick is allredy sucked with solder. I put it on repair parts and soldering it on the traces with litle bit of solder. It´s second life for the wick🙂
Nice Keyboard Vince 👍and good job on getting it working again. Ingenious use of copper tape. I've got a small Casio one to look at (I used to have one as a kid) so I'll probably do a video on that soon. Keep up the great work 👍👌
I used to have one of these and I had hours of fun which gave me an insensitive to eventually upgrade. I've had a few yamaha keyboards and every one I've had has taught me a lot. But the one I have right now is a yamaha tyros 1 and it's been playing up a bit so reluctantly I'll have to open it up and try to remedy the problems. Great video mate 👍🏽 👌
Back pre 2000 I used to do Tech Support for Schools and Colleges in Cornwall. There was a special Yamaha Carbon Grease for the membrane pad contact points, usual service item at the time, but my google searching was unable to locate it. The Power jack/broken PCB problem was a frequent one we would see, easy enough to fix with superglue and 14 gauge tinned copper wire as long as the remnants of the PCB were viable (if I recall we had a DX100 that kept coming back, I personally repaired the PSU plug part of the board 4 times at least! Bloody kids!)
@mymatevince The material you're looking for is CaiKot 44. It's a bit pricey, but it's a carbon/silver conductive paint specifically for membrane repair. I have had good success with it. Cheers!
Nice one, I have never seen that before. I struggled to find it here in the UK, but I have just managed to get it from DigiKey. I'll look forward to trying it out 👍👍
I remember as a kid spending an entire night playing with that keyboard, borrowed from a friend. I knew it wasn't the best thing compared to what I wanted but it was still a ton of fun being my first experience with multi timbral synths with recording.
One of the greatest machines ever created in the history of everything ever! I had one when I was 15 and you could use it like a complete recording studio creating recorded tracks to play along with. The synthesiser was amazing, and it taught me how sound envelopes work. To think this thing was primarily sold as a toy in WHSmith and the like, presumably because of the mini keys, it's only real downside.
I tried most of the fixes, the silver paint (expensive) did quite a good job, but did fail in time. When doing an Atari games machine the joysticks are the same carbon contacts, nothing seemed to stick on them, I ended up buying a carpenters wide carbon pencil, put a dod of superglue where the contacts are and scraped the carbon from the pencil on to the glue. It's still going after aprox 3 years now. I've since fixed a few hand controllers with no problems.
I had this exact keyboard when I was 17 and it was brilliant. And, incredibly, I found another one in Cash Convertors about two months ago which is in full working order. It's need a clean up and maybe some straightening of the keys, plus a door for the battery compartment, but it all works. £50 quids.
My sister and I got keyboard like this one birthday - we ended up jamming together on them bashing out Jean Michel Jarre tunes. We took them to camp and performed on them in the talent quest and won :) I can chord now but back then "Auto chord" was a blessing :)
Will there be a contact in the power connector, acting as a spring to hold the connector? If so that might need to be levered out a bit. BTW, you need to look at using tissue paper and baking soda for repairs with superglue.
I've had one of these from new and it was a great intro to keyboards/synths etc. Also used the MIDI with my Atari ST but, sadly, the ST is long gone. The PSS-680 is still in great condition though and is in deep storage under the bed. As I now do synth repairs as a hobby this was a great repair video and, yes there are lots of conductive carbon paint solutions made just for this kind of thing. Just look for rubber key pad repair paint.
Around 30:09 you asked about carbon paint or something similar. You can find conductive adhesive pads for rubber keypads. They're available online - sometimes called "carbon pills".
Great fix Vince! Definitely had a few of these in the music room of my secondary school. Always used to be a battle as to who could get the best keyboard to mess around on, and most of us were tone deaf 😂. If this had been in a school, it could explain the wear on the drum pads. None of us kids could play a tune, but we all thought we were gods gift to drumming 😂
Hello again, the drum pads do tend to wear out after a while, though you’ll probably find it. It’s just the contacts on the back of them and you can probably improvise somehow to be able to reuse them. There are a total of 32 different drum sounds I’m sure you’ll find in good time. I’ll continue to watch the rest of your video as it is extremely interesting as to, I’m very much into music keyboards, including this old vintage stunning synthesiser keyboard.
My next door neighbour's parents bought him one of these exact keyboards shortly after it came out. I also had to make do with something miniscule costing £30. The thing about these keyboards with their racks of presets and style accompaniments was that they were fun to play with even if, like me, and in fact my neighbour's kid, you had no musical theory knowledge or playing skills. Nowadays everyone's a bedroom producer and I suppose the modern equivalent of this is buying loop packs to drop into your DAW. And I seem to remember seeing these sell for £199.99 on the High Street but never saw them get any cheaper, they'd usually be replaced a couple of years later with a new model at the same price point. I seem to remember this model being the most expensive consumer-grade keyboard you could buy on the High Street without going to a specialist music shop for 'serious kit' - these kind of things were classed more as home entertainment than aimed at actual musicians, hence the fact they were available at the likes of Dixons, Argos and Rumbelows, even though Yamaha were also making top end synthesizers at the time, they got sold through music shops instead. edit - also I'm fairly sure those bad membrane connections is why a lot of us lost interest in the instruments after we'd had them for a while. They couldn't stand up to six months of finger banging... I mean "drumming" - without starting to lose accuracy and after a while it became hard to play a beat in time.
Nice! I had one of those and funnily enough I was thinking about buying one again - it has what I think is THE best demo track of all synths of its type for the day, a very capable unit with basic FM and a 6 track recorder. Many years of fun was had! I seem to remember it costing my parents about £150, but man that was bargain of the decade for all the use and abuse it got! lol
I had one of those back in the day. Exact same model. Based on the Yamaha FM synths like the DX7 at the time. Eventually led me to owning a load of real synths and a studio in the 1990’s.
Hi Vince. Places like RS Components sell carbon coating paint which you apply with a brush and can renew expired carbon buttons, etc. MG Chemicals "Total Ground" is one such. It is about £19 for 12ml so not cheap, but would repair buttons to as-new. Also some youtube vids show people making DIY carbon or graphite paint. Hope this helps. Love your videos as always, especially the random one-off repairs.
Thank you Mike B, I did buy something similar, but if it doesn't work then I will buy the MG Chemicals version. Although expensive, I'm sure it will go a long way as long as it stays liquid and doesn't go off 👍👍👍
You were able to use a tube of superglue on two separate projects? And it didn’t harden in the tube in between? Truly, this is an age of wonder and miracles.
Some of those old yamaha sound chips can be quite sought after. No idea if there is such a chip in this board, but it may be worth harvesting that, if your repairs don't hold up. They were used in a lot of electronics back then such as sound cards for computers.
I've bought a electronic drum pad which doesn't power on (I knew this in advance) and this video has given me some tips on what to check when I switch it on! :)
Vince , i have successfully repaired membranes using a piece of tinfoil and a hole punch, to punch out many small metal dots then glue them onto the membrane pads.
My smaller version, the 480, has had silver paint on the buttons many times and is still going strong. The FM synth of these devices is still very very cool.
Hi great vid I have one of these. Where I have a connector that is constantly connected and disconnected I always use a short extension lead. This means, generally, that the socket is never under continuous load. Keep up the good shows.
I got a lesser model than that one Christmas around 1987. It played 'Don't go changing' for its demo tune as it went through all of the sounds. I certainly remember trying to play Crash by The Primitives on it when that came out in 1988. I bought another similar one around 1997 to use as a MIDI controller, which I still have. Great Fun!! :)
hey vince if you want yo make the repair permanent then Carbon Tabs with Leit Adhesive are what you should be using that's what we use for repairing old keyboards
There is a special compound available specifically for repairing these worn pads. Caig Caikote 44. It works very well when used properly. I've used it on synth keyboards and other carbon membranes.
You must let it dry thoroughly before reassembling.
Made my day this will fix sooo many of my retro game console controllers ❤
Thank you!!
Just can't thank you enough for your sweet support, Vince It feels so GOOD to have you by our side 🙌🙌
Thank you 👍👍👍
Had One back in 80's bought in Chicago in USA, brand new and after I exchanged in my many trades...many years out of sight ..it has return to me.. and that one will be kept. It was part of my Musical venture when teen. Great video. Thanks!
I still have one of these. It cost me £600 in 1989. It works perfectly.
What?!! Mine was £199 brand new from Dixons. Where did you buy yours from?
Jesus!
This YAMAHA PORTASOUND PSS-680 was my second keyboard, in the 80s, where I practiced Musical Composition. Currently I still use it (and I have two) despite having a Recording Studio with a lot of modern equipment.
Snap. I have one too and the original box!
i sold mine years ago and really wish i hadn't, it's a unique piece of gear.
The reason why no kid's talk of keyboards or synthesisers today is because everything you need to make music is already in a Digital Audio Workstation. (DAW) software like Ableton, Cubase, Fruityloops etc.. And anything else you need you can just buy plugins. So, kid's of today making music it's already built in there for them. Gone are the day's walking into town on a Saturday looking in Dixons, Tandy's and other musical shops. I use to love it back in the early 90's having a play on different synths and keyboards. 🤘
John Shuttleworth would be proud of that repair, well done Vince! Ooof 🤓
Maybe, might be a bit of a southern softie
He's got a Roller, F reg, F reg, F reg.
@@keepitpeelfull or half fat?
Frank Sidebottom would've been too
“ two margarines on the go ..🎵”
Hi Vince...i use REMOTE RESTORE to restore flex boards of remotes and controllers it's carbon paint in spray... i spray a bit in a little container and use a paint brush to redo the pads ! works amazingly !
Before you pulled the roll off copper tape out, I was thinking hole punch and copper tape would suit that out. Great video as ever Vince.
For the conductive buttons, try thinning a blob of silicone sealant with lighter fluid until it's like a thin paint then add graphite powder until the consistency thickens a little.
Scratch the faulty pad with sandpaper, clean with IPA then apply a thin coat of your conductive silicone paint.
Don't silicone sealants off-gas acetic acid when they cure? I've never tried this method, though I wonder whether using a rubber cement like copydex might be a bit better in that regard.
Are you sure India Pale Ale is a suitable cleaning agent? (Yes, I'm joking. Of course you mean Isopropyl Alcohol.)
Use neutral cure silicone (not acetyl cure - releases acetic acid). Neutral takes 24-48hours to cure, where acetyl takes 1-6 hours.
Big V has now set the standard for playing us out in every video. Absolutely loved it!
😂👍
A good use for used solder braid is for cracked PCB trace repair for thick tracks.
yep i use braid for my dc socket repairs, this is pretty normal on older keyboars
Amen to that! Better bodge wires! Thicker, esp with physically broken pcb's and much better amperage can go thru braid (not rly needed here obv, but numerous uses for higher amperage circuits!)
Wow that brings back good memories, I had that exact same model as a kid for Christmas. I thought I was a musician at the time. Brilliant video mate..
I fix these as a hobby. I have a vast collection of 70s 80s 90s vintage synthesizers. Good video Vince!!
I had one of these back when they came out (I was in Secondary School). Amazing keyboard. Learnt how to finger drum with it, but the blue pads were the first things to die. Great job restoring it!
I had one. I've been spending many hours a day when I was 15 playing guitar over the backing tracks I recorded with it. Super useful. And music is still my job after 30 years, so yes, I suppose it was actually useful. Thanks for sharing this, dude!
1988, my 9th birthday, I had the PSS780. Best birthday ever!!! Great video
Graphite from a pencil does work. You could try "lock lubricant" graphite powder thinned with PVA glue.
Since the button pads are round you could try using a hole punch and the copper tape to make small round copper pads.
For the drum pads, best option I found was to use kitchen foil. Use a paper hole punch to get the perfect size, glue shinny side of the tin foil to the 'middle' contact as you ONLY need one of these on each of the pad, (just the one contect in the middle). Glue wise, the green pritt stick that glues everything including metal is what I used, leave for 24hrs to dry just for good measure.
Depending how much you use the keyboard you may find the start/stop pad might loosen just a tad if you use the drums and record a lot, it will still work though. BTW the space between contact and board is so tight that cutting off the middle contact which I have done, and replacing them with a brand new one can cause some to continuously touch, its not like a TV remote gap but a hairs width tight. Wish someone could come up with a 3D printed replacement that has space to use any modern day console controller contact.
Tried this for drum pads and tv remotes 👍… kitchen foil, hole punch, superglue on each circle … quick, effective, long lasting.
I wish I'd known this years ago!! however, bought a roll of 'natural' slug repellant from 'one below' for £1 - a roll of thin copper tape. just need to find my hole punch and I can start fixing the glorious mess that is my pss-680. the tape is as wide as your average roll of selotape, so, should be able to punch a ton of holes in it and fix stuff without too much effort.
Wow! Brought back some memories when you hit the demo button there! I had 1 of these when I was younger. It had a quite nice FM synth section and was my first venture into synthesis ha Biggest secret to this as a relatively cheap home keyboard is that it also had midi ports. I had mine hooked up to my Atari St and used as a controller keyboard for other synths for a few years. Great video!
I had exactly the same setup :)
Nostalgia trip really. I had a buddy many many many years ago, he was showing off his synthesizer skills all the time. All the kids would just gather round whenever he would bring his Yamaha to school.
@29:50 if you're concerned with false presses try small strips of aluminum cut to shape of the pads only and a very small dab of glue on one side to adhere to the pads. I did this on several of the tamagotchis I repaired on my channel. Those membranes are still working really well.
Thanks Shawn, I was thinking of gluing just onto the pads, but I thought they might have more chance of coming astray than a whole section of copper tape. I have since bought some carbon pads in different sizes and silicone glue, hopefully this may be a lasting solution 👍👍👍
did you watch this early why does it say 1 day ago when the video was just uploaded?
@@VOLTRONDEFENDER4440Havingfunrepair is patron of this channel , they get an early access to videos.
@@Mymatevince no matter what, you worked around the problem to provide a solution. Anyone can recommend an improvement, but the initial work is what's important. Well done Vince!
@@VOLTRONDEFENDER4440 My Mate Vince Massive get early access to videos
14:49 Vince, for faders and carbon track switches you should be using the green DeoxIT, not the red one. The red one will deoxidize the carbon oxide layer (there are some questions about that) and we don't want that;). The red one will work for now, but you are shortening the lifespan of that volume fader.
EDIT: The green one also has some lubricant for faders or you can even get a dedicated fader grease. It's also safe with plastic parts. I've seen some videos about old audio receivers being doused with the red DeoxIT and then some composite material boards simply disintegrating.
For plastic safety the bigger difference is between the thin solvent-containing products (D-5 and F-5) versus the thicker non-solvent containing ones (D-100 and F-100). The former are pretty much just the latter, but diluted in a solvent that makes it work in an aerosol can and get more evenly distributed without using a ton of it. The solvent is, unfortunately, not safe for all plastics.
Thanks Omega Mark, I was told about this before so I have just purchased the DeoxIT Fader aerosol from Amazon, £26, but hopefully it will last a long time 👍👍👍
@@Mymatevince Vince, use the F100 whenever possible on these faders and carbon tracks. The aerosol is for tight spaces, flushing action and has very little lubricant. That F100 is for longer term solutions, as it better stays in place and gives fader movement a better feeling. Didn't try their fader grease, but you need something good quality for some pots and faders (especially in old audio equipment).
I hope you got the one with the old style straw that allows for better control. The new one with that big plastic on top and bigger diameter straw is atrocious due to overspray and it leaks all over the place. I'm surprised they still sell these.
They also have DeoxIT Gold for plated surfaces (gold plated (and other precious metals) fingers, etc.).
@@Omega_Mark Not sure which one it is as the pics on Amazon are not always identical to the one you get. I did see the Gold stuff for sale too, looks nice. I'm a big fan of DeoxIT so looking forward to receiving the fader version. Cheers again for the help👍
Vince, my 6 year old granddaughter absolutely loves her Yamaha keyboard which she inherited off her mum who got it as a present in the mid 80’s.
According to the Argos catalogue of Autumn/Winter 1988, says on page 281, item 17, that the RRP was £249.99, but they were selling it by then for £199.95.
Looking through old Argos PDF catalogues are always a nice place to grab old prices from here in the UK.
Excellent, thanks for finding it and posting the price 👍👍👍
The "weird thing" that happens on the left side of the keyboard is because you have it in chord/accompaniment mode where you can play with different accompaniment styles. I had a Yamaha PSS-170 as a kid. That thing is an absolute BEAST! :D
Just checked when your Walkman video was (as that was one of the first I saw, I think you were in the low 10k's or maybe less in terms of subs) and it was 4 years ago! Can't believe how time flies. Glad to see you/your channel are doing well mate, always enjoyable to watch and taught me tons.
I've still got a fully functioning PSS 790 - the one with the joystick and multi-channel recording. Cheers for the blast from the past 🙏🏽
With the loose power supply DC plug, if it isn't the original power pack that came with the unit, you might find the hole in the DC plug has a different size than the pin in the socket. Common sizes are 5.5mm x 2.1mm or 5.5mm x 2.5mm. The larger one can fit on the smaller pin but will feel loose and may not make contact at all. There are also adaptors available to go from one size to another, search "2.5mm DC Plug to 2.1mm DC Socket Power Adaptor" or "2.1mm DC Plug to 2.5mm DC Socket Power Adaptor". The different sizes are to do with the current handling of the plug, 2.1mm is usually for low current devices (like CCTV cameras) pulling only an amp or so. 2.5mm is designed to carry a couple of amps or more.
I remember a carbon paint that came in a very small jar for repairing the membrane buttons on remote controls. As I recall it worked pretty well but took a long time to dry.
Had a bust one of these years ago. It just went a bit loopy. I think these days I'd stand a chance of fixing it but back then I was clueless. I even saw one outside someone's house next to the bins a few years back. Wish I'd grabbed it.
You can make your own CA glue kicker out of 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda and 1/4 cup of purified water. You can also spray CA glue with alcohol and it functions as a kicker. The baking soda route is better because it actually makes the glued joint stronger.
For fixing worn down carbon, the MG Chemicals Rubber Keypad Repair Kit works perfectly and it's a long time solution.
I had a problem with my guitar hero controller's fret buttons which weren't registered every time. I just bought "remote control rubber buttons" in pack with glue. Those conductive rubber pads really made controller work again. Look them up :) I didn't play on the controller for 100 hours, but the glue really set them well. Of course you will have to change them again after some time, but that shouldn't happen just after few hours of playing ;)
Thanks azielok, I have just bought some from eBay and also a wide selection of carbon pads. Hopefully when it comes through I can glue them on and this will be a lasting repair. Cheers for letting me know what to look up 👌👍
You can get keypad conductive paint for painting on the existing pads. I've had to do that with two drum machines so far and those have twin pads for velocity sensing.
@@6581punkI tried some of that on the drum pads in mine and it didn’t work for me.
😂 flashes of Ross in Friends and his keyboard playing
Hey Vince, I don't know if you're still monitoring these comments, but in the past I have used that aluminum tape that you can get in the HVAC department of your local hardware store and just cut little squares of it, I didn't even round them off, and stuck them onto the membrane contacts.Or I guess you could get a small punch and punch out a bunch of round ones. I haven't tried it on a keyboard, but it has brought several of my remote controls back to life and seems to adhere surprisingly well. I fixed my Sony amplifier remote about 2 years ago and it is still going strong. Plus it will add a bit of thickness to the membranes if you think they are worn down. Cheers
Nice repair. For the power input, I wonder if it would have been worth mounting a power socket on the case, cutting away the board section where the power input was, then running wires from the input jack to the board.
It's what I would have done.
I would have bypassed that broken section completely and not bothered to try and repair it.
yes same idea me
I'm glad I came across this video - brought back a lot of memories. Back in High School, we had the next model up the 780. Not that I was any good on the keyboard, but, I always loved these machines. I ended up buying a Yamaha PSR-47 when I started working that I tried to learn to play but, can only play a little bit.
I managed to acquire a PSS-480 for my eldest son from a car boot sale for £3 then I managed to get myself a Yamaha PSR-4500 from Ebay.
great stuff!! we used these or the newer version of it at school, back in the very late 90s, The PSS 51
The PSS-51 was the last one of these wonderful machines (released around 1992 or something). It was the successor to the PSS-790 and -795...but with 80 rhythm styles instead of 50. All these three machines worked with 12bit AWM samples and had a vector stick to kind of "morph-mix" between up to 4 single sounds...while the PSS-680 (and its more colorful later revision PSS-780) had a 2-operator FM synthesis tone generator.
@@sauermusicDE i managed to have play with one of the model before the 51, it might have been the 790. which had the vector stick. I linked it up to the computer to do MIDI, and you can use a master keyboard with the full size keys to record into its sequencer too.
Blimey… had one of these synth when I started to to compose melodies in
My early 20’s.
Now I’ve become professional over the yrs.
Way to go Yamaha 👏👏👏
I had one in the early 90s. A fun key board/drum machine. Really came into its' own when coupled to a DAW (Music X on an Amiga) . Copy n paste a track then detune that using a a tiny amount of pitch bend. Sounded great.
Great fix I have in the past used a very soft HP pencil and had no issues with it failing later on. I noticed near the socket you repaired where the screw holds the board down it looked like a track maybe cracked near the fixing hole might be worth checking just incase it is open circuit. Time stamp 2.56 near the screw if you look at the video.
I see it Dave, looking on my big screen it is a discoloured patch of conformal coating in this instance. Cheers for pointing it out though 👍👍👍
We have this keyboard, at work it was donated. I work in a disabled day centre, where I do music with them. Our one still works, and we plug all the instruments guitars and synths, though a small pa and have a jam Tuesday afternoons. Our drummer, plays the donated drum kit over the top. For a retro keyboard it's got some nice, sounds and settings on it.
Guitar cavity shielding paint works great on contact pads. I used it to repair a MIDI controller key a few years ago, and it still works.
Hiya Vince. You can get Carbon conductive paint, maybe it would work better than the silver paint? Worth a try just to see what this carbon paint is all about. Another enjoyable video. Cheers.
PS. Farnell seems to sell it.
I have a Pss680, bought off ebay with a blown audio IC, changed it & now working. It's a good keyboard, only thing I wish it had was full size keys. I have used a pencil to repair worn out carbon pads, it lasts quite a while before needing to be done again.
I used to own one of these. Totally loved it. You could record 6 tracks of music and would loop your creations. Even made a sick little G-funk track on it. A bit of a gem, even though it sounds awful by todays standards. The FM synthesiser was great fun too Turn up the feedback to get some really narly sounds.
I’ve used aluminum foil cut to the shape of the carbon pads, and silicone glue to stick them on, to fix a remote control where some of the buttons stopped working. Great fix Vince. Another wonderful video. Best wishes from the USA,
Aluminum foil sounds like a much cheaper solution!
I had the PSS 790 as a kid, my friend across the road had the 680, he played better than me though. Great repair, never seen underneath them drum pads before, loved it Vince.
Oh, and you published this video on my 52nd birthday. 35 years after I got the keyboard.
These old keyboards have a certain charm. I did a similar repair on the power connector and headphones jack of my Roland E15, which I bought used. Luckily there was no circuit board damage in that case, but just some cracked solder joints. So just resoldering these connectors was enough to get it fixed.
Haha I’ve got one of these I still use for nice lo fi crunchy sounds and you’re right about kids don’t talk about keyboards when everyone had one in the 80s coz computer games and vr are more popular now
Never used a Yamaha keyboard, though in 1995, I got a Casio CTK-500 digital keyboard for Christmas. I also had the older Meccano brand Erector sets. One speaker went out on the Casio, so I found a working speaker, but it was smaller than original; so I stripped and added extra wire between smaller speaker and original circuit board wiring, then made a custom bracket using Erector set parts to reach original speaker mount holes and the 'X' made by Erector set held the smaller speaker in place. Keyboard worked. That repair and modification I did at 17, with no electronic repair knowledge.
My freinds brother used to have this model back in the day and it was so impressive we had lots of fun playing it
Raced to get to one of the few of these we had in music lessons at school, absolute beast! Amazing some of the stuff you could get it to do.
Nice job! I had the same power jack issue on a Sega Genesis, still working strong 10+ years later. I also have the PSS-480 from this series, they are actually really powerful synths!! If you plug this in to an external audio system, even just a stereo console, they sound SSOOO much better than through the small built-in speakers.
Another great video Vince! For this sort of repair I have successfully used small disks cut from thin cooking foil (aluminium foil), stuck in place with superglue.
I got one for my Christmas. I'd be around 12. It came from Dixons. The edition before had yellow pads. Was approx £180.
Hallo VInce, for repair the trace like this i use a used solder-wick. The wick is allredy sucked with solder. I put it on repair parts and soldering it on the traces with litle bit of solder. It´s second life for the wick🙂
I have a pss-480. Haven't dug it out in years. It's similar except for the pads. Bought mine from Tandy in the 80s
I had one of these. It was a brilliant little keyboard. Made some great music with it.
Nice Keyboard Vince 👍and good job on getting it working again. Ingenious use of copper tape. I've got a small Casio one to look at (I used to have one as a kid) so I'll probably do a video on that soon. Keep up the great work 👍👌
I used to have one of these and I had hours of fun which gave me an insensitive to eventually upgrade. I've had a few yamaha keyboards and every one I've had has taught me a lot. But the one I have right now is a yamaha tyros 1 and it's been playing up a bit so reluctantly I'll have to open it up and try to remedy the problems.
Great video mate 👍🏽 👌
Back pre 2000 I used to do Tech Support for Schools and Colleges in Cornwall. There was a special Yamaha Carbon Grease for the membrane pad contact points, usual service item at the time, but my google searching was unable to locate it. The Power jack/broken PCB problem was a frequent one we would see, easy enough to fix with superglue and 14 gauge tinned copper wire as long as the remnants of the PCB were viable (if I recall we had a DX100 that kept coming back, I personally repaired the PSU plug part of the board 4 times at least! Bloody kids!)
@mymatevince The material you're looking for is CaiKot 44. It's a bit pricey, but it's a carbon/silver conductive paint specifically for membrane repair. I have had good success with it. Cheers!
Nice one, I have never seen that before. I struggled to find it here in the UK, but I have just managed to get it from DigiKey. I'll look forward to trying it out 👍👍
I had one of these when they came out. They do still look good today. I recall a 'super accompaniment' option.
I had that as my first keyboard. I remember it being about £180 but on sale at Comet. One of the drum pads split very early on!
I remember as a kid spending an entire night playing with that keyboard, borrowed from a friend. I knew it wasn't the best thing compared to what I wanted but it was still a ton of fun being my first experience with multi timbral synths with recording.
One of the greatest machines ever created in the history of everything ever! I had one when I was 15 and you could use it like a complete recording studio creating recorded tracks to play along with. The synthesiser was amazing, and it taught me how sound envelopes work. To think this thing was primarily sold as a toy in WHSmith and the like, presumably because of the mini keys, it's only real downside.
@Mymatevince next time try baking soda with super glue. It makes really strong bond and hardens quickly. Few layers should be more than enough.
I tried most of the fixes, the silver paint (expensive) did quite a good job, but did fail in time.
When doing an Atari games machine the joysticks are the same carbon contacts, nothing seemed to stick on them, I ended up buying a carpenters wide carbon pencil, put a dod of superglue where the contacts are and scraped the carbon from the pencil on to the glue.
It's still going after aprox 3 years now.
I've since fixed a few hand controllers with no problems.
I had this exact keyboard when I was 17 and it was brilliant. And, incredibly, I found another one in Cash Convertors about two months ago which is in full working order. It's need a clean up and maybe some straightening of the keys, plus a door for the battery compartment, but it all works. £50 quids.
My sister and I got keyboard like this one birthday - we ended up jamming together on them bashing out Jean Michel Jarre tunes. We took them to camp and performed on them in the talent quest and won :) I can chord now but back then "Auto chord" was a blessing :)
Will there be a contact in the power connector, acting as a spring to hold the connector? If so that might need to be levered out a bit. BTW, you need to look at using tissue paper and baking soda for repairs with superglue.
I've had one of these from new and it was a great intro to keyboards/synths etc. Also used the MIDI with my Atari ST but, sadly, the ST is long gone. The PSS-680 is still in great condition though and is in deep storage under the bed. As I now do synth repairs as a hobby this was a great repair video and, yes there are lots of conductive carbon paint solutions made just for this kind of thing. Just look for rubber key pad repair paint.
Around 30:09 you asked about carbon paint or something similar. You can find conductive adhesive pads for rubber keypads. They're available online - sometimes called "carbon pills".
Use the braid you just used to clean up the board makes a very sturdy connection and it doesn't end up in the bin
Great fix Vince! Definitely had a few of these in the music room of my secondary school. Always used to be a battle as to who could get the best keyboard to mess around on, and most of us were tone deaf 😂. If this had been in a school, it could explain the wear on the drum pads. None of us kids could play a tune, but we all thought we were gods gift to drumming 😂
Hello again, the drum pads do tend to wear out after a while, though you’ll probably find it. It’s just the contacts on the back of them and you can probably improvise somehow to be able to reuse them. There are a total of 32 different drum sounds I’m sure you’ll find in good time. I’ll continue to watch the rest of your video as it is extremely interesting as to, I’m very much into music keyboards, including this old vintage stunning synthesiser keyboard.
My next door neighbour's parents bought him one of these exact keyboards shortly after it came out. I also had to make do with something miniscule costing £30.
The thing about these keyboards with their racks of presets and style accompaniments was that they were fun to play with even if, like me, and in fact my neighbour's kid, you had no musical theory knowledge or playing skills. Nowadays everyone's a bedroom producer and I suppose the modern equivalent of this is buying loop packs to drop into your DAW. And I seem to remember seeing these sell for £199.99 on the High Street but never saw them get any cheaper, they'd usually be replaced a couple of years later with a new model at the same price point. I seem to remember this model being the most expensive consumer-grade keyboard you could buy on the High Street without going to a specialist music shop for 'serious kit' - these kind of things were classed more as home entertainment than aimed at actual musicians, hence the fact they were available at the likes of Dixons, Argos and Rumbelows, even though Yamaha were also making top end synthesizers at the time, they got sold through music shops instead.
edit - also I'm fairly sure those bad membrane connections is why a lot of us lost interest in the instruments after we'd had them for a while. They couldn't stand up to six months of finger banging... I mean "drumming" - without starting to lose accuracy and after a while it became hard to play a beat in time.
Still have mine in full working order. Great keyboard in the day. Works great in midi mode too. I now use a DAW and VST’s.
Nice! I had one of those and funnily enough I was thinking about buying one again - it has what I think is THE best demo track of all synths of its type for the day, a very capable unit with basic FM and a 6 track recorder. Many years of fun was had!
I seem to remember it costing my parents about £150, but man that was bargain of the decade for all the use and abuse it got! lol
you might find someone has exported .mid files of the built in demo tracks...
I had one of those back in the day. Exact same model. Based on the Yamaha FM synths like the DX7 at the time. Eventually led me to owning a load of real synths and a studio in the 1990’s.
Hi Vince. Places like RS Components sell carbon coating paint which you apply with a brush and can renew expired carbon buttons, etc. MG Chemicals "Total Ground" is one such. It is about £19 for 12ml so not cheap, but would repair buttons to as-new. Also some youtube vids show people making DIY carbon or graphite paint. Hope this helps. Love your videos as always, especially the random one-off repairs.
Thank you Mike B, I did buy something similar, but if it doesn't work then I will buy the MG Chemicals version. Although expensive, I'm sure it will go a long way as long as it stays liquid and doesn't go off 👍👍👍
You were able to use a tube of superglue on two separate projects? And it didn’t harden in the tube in between?
Truly, this is an age of wonder and miracles.
graphite pencil on the rubber button black pads works, saved a few TV remotes this way.
Some of those old yamaha sound chips can be quite sought after. No idea if there is such a chip in this board, but it may be worth harvesting that, if your repairs don't hold up. They were used in a lot of electronics back then such as sound cards for computers.
I've bought a electronic drum pad which doesn't power on (I knew this in advance) and this video has given me some tips on what to check when I switch it on! :)
Vince , i have successfully repaired membranes using a piece of tinfoil and a hole punch, to punch out many small metal dots then glue them onto the membrane pads.
My smaller version, the 480, has had silver paint on the buttons many times and is still going strong. The FM synth of these devices is still very very cool.
That was a lovely fix - and WHAT A KEYBOARD! Although mortally offended you said something from 1988 was OLD! :P
😂
Hi great vid I have one of these. Where I have a connector that is constantly connected and disconnected I always use a short extension lead. This means, generally, that the socket is never under continuous load. Keep up the good shows.
Oh wow! that keyboard brings back many hours wasted in the music room at school wishing I had one!! Great repair!
Great idea with the copper tape my partner puts it around her plant pots to keep slugs an snails at bay 😊😊
I got a lesser model than that one Christmas around 1987. It played 'Don't go changing' for its demo tune as it went through all of the sounds. I certainly remember trying to play Crash by The Primitives on it when that came out in 1988. I bought another similar one around 1997 to use as a MIDI controller, which I still have. Great Fun!! :)
my buddy linked me this video because I inherited one of these from an older family friend, very cool
I have a PSS 790 tucked away in a cupboard. Complete with power supply and user manual.
I had this as a kid brings back so many memories I never learnt how to play it but was fun to mess around on
We used to have these in our music lessons at school in the 90s.. made some sick beats with those drum pads lol
hey vince if you want yo make the repair permanent then Carbon Tabs with Leit Adhesive are what you should be using that's what we use for repairing old keyboards
Am really glad that this thing is not in my house, but a good video again ;)
Brilliant, Vince!!! 🎉 I have a Korg X3 Workstation from the 90s. I need to overhaul it. You've inspired me, Sir!!! Cheers! ❤ 😊