Aftertouch too heavy! What's up ?

[elena2]

Best to visit the store and see for yourself before buying, I guess.

Lol easier to say Here in Italy there are very few well supplied stores where one can try the instruments... not even in Milan or Turin... all in Rome or south... I could never travel 6 hours plus 6 hours back only to try a keyboard ! However I am now finally happy with my fixed cme. Long life to it!

[elena2]

Ok just to update my thread,
I *thought* I was happy with the result of my electronic "hack". Unfortunately, after some time and trials, I must say the aftertouch is still too heavy. The ones of my old dx7 and restored akai mx1000 were just a pleasure to play: a light touch slightly over the pressure required to play a key was enough to trigger it.

I then checked with a ohmmeter: it is not an issue with the keyboard or the electronics. And you can't even do miracles with paralleling resistors: it is just the ribbon which has a too high threshold. It measures infinity up to some 2/3 kg, then the resistance becomes finite abruptly and decreases with pressure.

So I have no other choice than changing the strips (which is a nightmare, because finding a suitable one which is not 2nd hand is close to impossible).
Some robotics shops here have these strips but they are max 600mm long, and they can't be jointed (afaik).
I will hopefully manage to find one eventually.

However I really do not think it is caused by wear. Because (as I perhaps said already) I really saw brand new keyboards which the same way require an insane force to trigger the aftertouch.
I can understand some people never used it, doesn't need it doesn'like it etc but please also consider those who love AT instead !!!
A manufacturer who is aware of adopting an AT ribbon requiring 2/3 kg of force to trigger it should definitely change his business and stop building instruments IMHO. This really makes no sense. And looking around in forums & co it really seems a common problem !!!!!! So, it's not just me.

Once more, it seems we were better when we were worse

[Jim Y]

I have an Edirol/Roland controller where the AT is stupid heavy. I've tried to mod it to increase the sensitivity as I'd found out elsewhere. However, it still doesn't help since the pressure strip itself doesn't even start to change resistance with moderate pressure so there's nothing to amplify. It isn't a wear problem as it was like that from new.
I blame the position of the strip, near the ends of the black keys and doesn't give much mechanical advantage. I think it ought to be nearer the key pivot - think nutcracker action.

[elena2]

If you replace it with a generic one from robotics shops, those usually are lighter to respond. Of course you shall check the weight triggering threshold to be as low as possible. But as I said, the problem is that they are often max 600 mm long and either you find a way to joint them, or you must use two and connect them in parallel with a bridging wire pair running under the keybed.
Too bad that aftertouch strip sensors are so hard to find. Syntaur has some as well as ebay, but most of them are both 2nd hand (no go !!!) and crazily priced !!+

[zerocrossing]

Aftertouch sucks anyway. For me, it's a useless function. I much rather just use the mod wheel. It's channel Aftertouch anyway, so.

It’s all fun and games until you learn to play with both hands.

[zerocrossing]

Aftertouch can definitely degrade over time. I had a TS-10 in the 90s. Lovely keyboard. Polyphonic aftertouch too. I stupidly sold it and did without polyphonic aftertouch for a long time. Eventually I decided to buy one back, and bizarrely ended up buying back my original keyboard on Reverb! (Either that or someone else had put the exact same ding in the top metal plate that I had) When I got it, the aftertouch was non usable. There are rubber bushings inside the keyboard that become stiff with age. They must have been like rocks. So, off the TS-10 went.

A while later, I came across a General Music S2, and the seller assured me the aftertouch still felt great. I took a chance, as it wasn’t very expensive, and he was telling the truth. The aftertouch feels great on it. Similar aged keyboard, very different result.

So that’s that. Some say a full refurbishment would have fixed the TS-10, but I didn’t feel like going though that pain. That said, a hairline crack developed in the S2’s circuit board that deals with such things and the aftertouch stopped working, so it ended up going to a shop for 3 months. Had the Hydrasynth Deluxe existed at the time, I probably would have sold the S2 as partially working and moved on, but it didn’t, and from reports I’m told that the S2 feels much better anyway.

So, if the keyboard was not too expensive, I’d say maybe move on. If it seems worth fixing, get it repaired.

[elena2]

Re: AT can definitely degrade over time. Well I cannot rule that out of course, but in my personal case, if it was about ageing/wear, I would rather expect the weight threshold or resistance to increase in a pattern close to the center, where keys are played statistically the most, and to instead still be OK close to the lowest and highest keys, which are definitely used less frequently to never.
This never seemed the case here in my experience.
Then I could suspect it is rather a degradation caused uniformly by ageing within the thin film and not caused by mechanical wear...

Re: consider moving vs. repairing. My case is not easy, because I already had a hard time finding a keyboard with an action and overall features which suit my needs. In particular considering, as I said already, that the closest shop here where I can try some master keyboards is 4/5 hours driving plus driving back - which is not an option for me considering the costs involved.
Even the Physis piano k4/k5: they all talk a big deal of those, but I cannot risk to buy without trying. They might still have a heavy aftertouch by design AFAIK. Or an action I might dislike (my recent dramatic experience with the Fatar kind of shoked me lol)

Therefore, considering that a possible repair would be made by me without extra costs involved, this is still the preferred option to me.

Ps. If somebody is aware of a seller where I can find a couple of 1200mm pressure sensor strips (not second hand !!!) he is welcome !