Showing posts with label repair. Show all posts
Showing posts with label repair. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 05, 2011

Project : Clavinova

I was recently given a Yamaha Clavinova CVP-87A.



It is a digital electronic piano with 88 weighted keys, rhythm section and recording/playback features. What you would buy if you did not have room for a real piano, but wanted the "feel" of a real piano. Beautiful rosewood cabinet. The piano is non-functional due to a number of defective components on the main sound board that have failed. The solution from Yamaha is to purchase a $500 replacement main board. Apparently, these failures were common, but not common enough to be recognized as a factory defect. Most people make the financial decision to buy a new piano rather than spend $500 to repair a 12 year old piano.

Upon inspecting the main board, the component failures are fortunately obvious, but unfortunately numerous. All are surface mount electrolytic capacitors....which are in some ways easier than replacing through hole parts.

The service manual has been ordered from Yamaha ($16, on CD) and soon another project will begin.

If the piano turns out to be unrepairable, it will serve as an excellent chassis (and keyboard) for a future VPO (Virtual Pipe Organ) project.

Update - 1/6 -: Received confirmation from Yamaha that manual has shipped

Saturday, January 01, 2011

Battery upgrade for 30G iPod - the patient lives

I was getting about 20 minutes on a charge, so the battery obviously needed replacing. Ordered a kit from OWC. Got around to installing it tonight. If I hadn't forgotten to re-install a (non-critical) insulator, it would have been totally done in about 10 minutes. You can see the piece I originally left out in the upper right hand corner.  Doh!

The online video warned about the problems with removing adhesive, but it was no big deal (2 small pieces of double stick tape). Here is the patient on the operating table, about to close up :