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Triton Extreme 88 Entire Keyboard Failure (And Fix?)

 
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bpoodoo
Senior Member


Joined: 27 Dec 2019
Posts: 429
Location: Ding Dong, TX

PostPosted: Fri May 01, 2020 10:56 pm    Post subject: Triton Extreme 88 Entire Keyboard Failure (And Fix?) Reply with quote

Yesterday I thought my Triton Extreme's number had finally come up - that it had suffered a fatal malfunction, a failure that would be too costly to warrant getting it fixed.

The problem started yesterday after I downloaded and installed a sampled grand piano (65Mb) and noticed some strange behavior. Half the notes wouldn't play. Of the notes that would play, velocity zones were messed up. I could play soft, no sound on some keys; on other keys, play hard, no sound.

After several factory resets (power on holding ENTER+0 then power on holding MENU+EXIT per Operation Guide and Parameter Guide manuals) followed by reloading the piano samples from USB flash drive, eventually the entire keyboard malfunctioned.

I then unplugged all cords except the power cord and headphones. Several more power cycles and factory resets did not help. All but a few random keys would play sound, but very softly, not the correct note, and usually would sound multiple notes simultaneously by pressing just one key.

Interestingly, I could load sequences, and they would play back perfectly. All the sound ROMs, audio processing, and outputs seemed to be working fine. I now owned it seemed a very large, but functional, Triton Extreme sound module.

I recorded a new sequence as I played all the notes across the keyboard. Using the Event Editor I could see that the same few notes I was faintly hearing were being recorded, and they were all the wrong note numbers and all with a velocity of 004.

I tried again this morning, hopeful that the gremlins in my keyboard were on a brief sojourn and had decided overnight to leave and take up residence elsewhere. No such luck. Same problem as before, a seriously messed up nonfunctional keyboard.

Armed with a Phillips screwdriver, I was about to open her up - maybe I could find a loose keyboard connector or something obvious. But a bad transistor, diode, capacitor, or op amp would be bad news, a problem requiring expert troubleshooting, a repair job and could mean the end, possibly relegating the keyboard to being sold for parts.

But I reconsidered and put down the screwdriver, realizing that not all of the kinder, gentler "soft" options for repair had been tried, like reinstalling the OS (in my case, upgrading from 1.05 to 1.06) or performing low-level diagnostic routines.

There is a Korg Tech Notes "Korg Triton Extreme series - Reset and diagnostic procedures" you can find online that includes many subsystem and unit level tests. This document is not included in the user manuals. It is intended for keyboard technicians (or in my case, desperate keyboard owner).

"THE FIX":

The full diagnostic test suite is accessed by pressing ENTER+5 during power up. Upon running, all of the automatic tests returned status of OK. Additional manual tests can be accessed with Up Down Enter Rew FF keys. One of those tests is "Keyboard + Touch". You select keyboard as 61, 76, Old 88, or New 88. I selected New 88. Running that test requires you to play each note from highest to lowest in sequence between velocity 20 and 100. Press Start/Stop to start the test. It will show OK for each note you play and its actual velocity or ERROR if you play the wrong note in sequence or not in the velocity range 20-100. It was a good sign when I saw that the keyboard test was showing result OK for all notes and showing correct velocity values for those notes.

So far so good. The keyboard is now working fine. Good as 14-year-old new. It continues to work fine after several normal power cycles. Did running these low-level diagnostic routines and the keyboard test really fix it, or was it just a coincidence? I don't know. It's the age-old question of ascertaining whether two events are coincidental, correlated, or causal. I just know it's working now.
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bpoodoo
Triton Extreme 88 w/MOSS
"We all move on, like centuries and doves."


Last edited by bpoodoo on Wed Sep 23, 2020 3:50 pm; edited 3 times in total
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jackson111



Joined: 22 May 2012
Posts: 15

PostPosted: Mon May 04, 2020 12:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

thanks for sharing!
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bpoodoo
Senior Member


Joined: 27 Dec 2019
Posts: 429
Location: Ding Dong, TX

PostPosted: Wed Sep 23, 2020 3:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The music workstation gremlins again attacked my Triton this morning. They bricked it in the same manner as above.

I have traced the cause to holding ENTER+0 upon power up to reinitialize all programs/combis. I won't be doing that again. It opens a portal to allow a troupe of jinn inside the keyboard circuitry and wreak havoc until corrective action is taken to purge them.

Fortunately, running the Keyboard test from the MENU+5 diagnostic again fixed the problem. So this does appear to be the corrective action to cause the fix, whatever it's doing, and is not just coincidental.
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bpoodoo
Triton Extreme 88 w/MOSS
"We all move on, like centuries and doves."
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