I bought a B-stock Darkstar at the beginning of this year and it came with no issues out of the box. A few weeks ago I found that keys 8-16 (counting up from the lowest note) were completely dead. I just tried replacing the contact strips on those keys, but now it’s more like ~80% of the keys that are dead upon power up test (including all the ones with fresh contact strips). Presumably the board itself or the little controller board is having an issue rather than contacts.
Can anyone please advise what to try next? Are there any good repair techs (ideally in the US) still servicing these synths? Open to suggestions here – I can both DIY repair and send off for service as needed. Thanks.
Are you still having trouble with this keybed? Recommend using industrial (99.99%) alcohol only (you can purchase from Amazon for ~$20 a bottle). This comes straight from Kemper’s Hardware Service and Repair Admin in Germany. Recommend cleaning contacts well and letting them dry thoroughly. Use a hairdryer on a low / no heat setting to ensure things are 100% dry before re-assembling. These keybeds are finicky. If you’re getting 80% after relacing pads, I’m nearly positive cleaning the contacts will resolve your issue. So long as there is no visible corrosion on the keybed contact board, you should be able to fix this. You can probably get away with 70% as Syntaur recommends, but Kemper will tell you to use pure alcohol only. I have cleaned many a virus keybed contact board in my day. Working on one for a TI2 Polar now
