I have a 1988 Roland D-20, and btw greetings from Australia! I’m Nathan, I’m 20 years old and a synth nerd. I’m always looking for vintage digital and analog synths, as well as early samplers. Unfortunately parts (and synths) are really expensive here in Australia, so I’ve had to resort to running across all over the internet to find synths (and parts for said synths). Anyway, does anyone here at Syntaur have a Roland D-20 keybed? An entire one, at that? Mine has 10 dead keys due to a crack in the board (and the boards themselves are 35 USD… and I am not experienced in repair other than removing parts and disconnecting cables.) so I am thinking of replacing the entire keybed.
We don’t sell the keybeds themselves (usually when we get them, they have broken keys, dirty contacts, etc.). Maybe you could have a service guy repair your cracked board…? It is not too difficult for someone experienced in soldering - you just solder jumper wires across the breaks in any of the circuit board traces.
We stopped shipping the longer key contact boards outside of the US, because in nearly every case, they would arrive broken. No matter how well we packed them, someone would always find a way to break them. We had one customer beg us to send one to Canada despite our policy not to, so we packed it very ruggedly, and it arrived broken. We sent a replacement, packed even more ruggedly, and it arrived broken. That was the last two of those out-of-production boards.
Thanks for replying to me so quickly, Sam. Well, I have tried Ebay before… And me and a friend attempted to repair the broken traces, but that resulted in the synth’s keybed not wanting to work at all. I do have the keys and rubber contact strips, all I do need is a keybed to throw them on. Is it possible that the shipping company you used to use kept breaking them on purpose? Sadly it looks like I’ll have to find another D-20, swap my mainboard out of mine for the other one. Mine is a bit beat up, too.