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Kross 1-61 Contact Strips work on Kross 1-88?

Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2021 2:36 pm
by Musicwithharry
Good Morning,
I have a friend who has purchased a Korg Kross 1-88 (on my recommendation) and when she brought it over last weekend, I noticed that some keys were not responding to velocity equally. These were in the C4-E4 range. The rest of the board was fine.

I decided to take it apart and inspect/clean that area and sure enough, there was some residue from something, possibly like a paste type substance, around that area.

I removed the keybed and removed the keys themselves in that octave and cleaned the contact strips. I also re-seated the contact strips so that they were secure where they are supposed to be.

I was also careful not to overclean the carbon tracings on the PCB where the contact strips go, so I did not remove any of the carbon on the tracings. In fact, I did not really even clean the carbon tracings. I just cleaned around/in between them where there was residue.

When I put it back together, the D4 and D#4 keys would not respond at all.

I am fairly certain that the contact strip needs to be replaced for that octave area. I do not see any issues visibly on the carbon tracing on the PCB.

I found some contact strips for the Kross 1-88 at Syntaur, but they were out of stock. I cross-referenced the strips for the Kross 1-61 and they are in stock.

Are the contact strips for the 61-key and 88-key the same? Will the 61-key strips work in the 88? I was not completely sure, since one action is weighted and the other is not.

When I pulled apart the keyboard, it was pretty clean inside and the rest of the keybed looks fine. I was surprised at how clean it really was.

This keyboard is actually her third attempt at trying to buy a Kross 1-88. The first one would not power on with the power supply, so she took it back (we tried an extra Korg power supply that I had to verify that her supply was not bad). The second unit's order was canceled by the seller. Here we are on purchase attempt #3 and now we have the issue above. If this one does not work, I told her that maybe she should look at the Kross 2-88 instead.

The reason she chose to get the Kross 1-88 instead of the Kross 2-88 is because I have the Kross 1 units at home and would be programming hers for her. I could program mine with what she needs and simply save that PCG/SNG file(s) and give them to her.

I thank you for your answers and any additional advice that I maybe missed when initially checking out her keyboard last weekend.

Grace,
Harry

Cleaning contacts

Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2021 2:59 pm
by Curo
I have a similar problem with uneven velocity response on a Kross 2. Was it difficult to access the contacts? Did you use a troubleshooting guide of some type?