My Roland D110 Display is so dim i can almost not see what is on display. Do you think it is worth the risk of trying to fix myself who has no electronics experience (other than breaking stuff)?
I saw some OLED displays for sale on EBAY and Reverb.com like this:
Description: Oled Display Upgrade for a Roland D-110. Choice of red, blue, white or amber. Display is easy to install, will be supplied with ribbon cable/connectors attached, plug N play ! No soldering !
Now my old trusty D110 only cost me 70 bucks and these things are sold for more than that with shipping. Hmmmm.
Any comments, advice, warnings are appreciated.
If you’re on facebook you might want to check out and ask this group which is dedicated to display retrofits:
I haven’t tried any myself yet, but one thing I’ve gathered is you can get the parts much cheaper than the kits you’ll find. But the kits may be easier to install, so YMMV.
Just a general opinion, not specific to the D-110…
I have had several pieces of gear (including Roland MC-500mkII, R8m, JV880) that were all needing new displays. There are various kits across eBay & Reverb. They range from just $30 to some in the hundreds of dollars. In my experience, an updated display is one of the best investments one can make in beloved gear.
I look for OLED when available, though they are generally on the more expensive end. If there is a “plug’n’play” option that doesn’t require soldering that makes me even more compelled to purchase that display. Even so, I don’t consider myself particularly handy and have had good experiences replacing the displays I purchased over the years. Right now I’m going to replace an AKAI S900 screen with a solder-less OLED screen that should arrive from Europe in a few days.
I recommend diving in and getting to know the innards of your synth with a screen replacement (and think about a battery replacement, if that may apply).
While OLED is fine for modern synths. For vintage they don’t implement any screen saver (display blanking when idle). So you risk having uneven characters over the lifetime of the unit. They can also be electronically noisy, less of an issue in a large synth, but on a more compact unit there’s a risk of crosstalk noise.
Thank you Gilesjuk for the warning. I am slow to research But will definately take this into consideration.
Another thing I saw hinted at was adding a new light behind the LCD. Not sure how any of it works, but Hopefully I get the thing fixed up the best possible way without hurting the sound quality (most important).
