3 years old and sick (PX-360)

[sslyutov]

I have discovered yesterday a new issue with my PX-360.

I turned on my Privia and started playing using the grand piano voice.

I noticed right away that the pitch of each individual note is floating.

That's a bummer. Three years old and out of tune.
I thought that should never happen with DP. Obviously, I was wrong.

I tried to swing a pitch wheel (I actually never use it).
It did not help.
The problem disappeared after 10-15 minutes.

I am sure this problem will be coming back until it will turn into a permanent issue.

I had PSR for over 12 years (sold it 5 years ago). It worked fine all the time.

The similar problem I had on a toy keyboard 25 years old, which went out of tune completely.

Quality of parts is a subject which did not appear to me as important until now.

[Brad Saucier]

This is NOT a common issue for Privia keyboards.  Rotate the pitch bend wheel a few more times to self clean the potentiometer in it. Unused potentiometers, in general, can accumulate dirt and corrosion over several years of no use.  If cleaning does not help, check if your warranty is still valid.  Most Privia's are covered for 3 years.

[sslyutov]

53 minutes ago, Brad Saucier said:

This is NOT a common issue for Privia keyboards.  Rotate the pitch bend wheel a few more times to self clean the potentiometer in it. Unused potentiometers, in general, can accumulate dirt and corrosion over several years of no use. 

1

I hope you are right.

We will see how it goes ...

I can set the setting for Pitch Bend Wheel to 0 to turn it off.

 

For me, a bad capacitor is a more rational explanation.

[sslyutov]

This Privia was not used much. 90%  of those 3 years it was sitting under the desk and served as a sound bank.

 

[Brad Saucier]

The keyboard automatically calibrates the pitch bend wheel during boot up.  If the potentiometer is dirty, it will cause an erratic voltage level which would manifest as erratic pitch changes equally affecting all keys.  If setting the menu item for pitch bend range to zero prevents the problem, that indicates it is a dirty potentiometer in the pitch wheel.   

[sslyutov]

2 minutes ago, Brad Saucier said:

The keyboard automatically calibrates the pitch bend wheel during boot up.  If the potentiometer is dirty, it will cause an erratic voltage level which would manifest as erratic pitch changes that equally affect all keys.  If setting the pitch range to zero prevents to problem, that proves it is a dirty potentiometer in the pitch wheel.   

Thank you for the information!

It is great, I will check whether the settings will help to avoid the problem.

[Brad Saucier]

As far as those five other threads linked in your previous post, none of those turned out to be out-of-tune.  Only one of them was an actual hardware fault, which was easily corrected.  In order of how you posted each thread....

 

1) He had stretch tuning turned on

2) It was not really out of tune. User posted a normal audio demo.

3) Another that was not really out of tune.  Daughter heard it wrong.

4) Also not out of tune.  A velocity sensor was dirty.  Easily fixed with air

5) Also not out of tune.  User didn't know the transpose button was pressed previously.  

[sslyutov]

Thank you Brad! 

This is so nice of you (reviewing and commenting on all of those issues) Appreciate it a lot!

It is possible that some dust collected on the potentiometer(a note: the instrument is covered with a protective cover all the time while it is not in use. 

I will see whether the issue is related to the wheel or not and share the results.

[sslyutov]

So far so good.

But I am still worried since it has happened.

I left PX on for ~24 hours.
Minimized sympathetic resonance, hammer, pitch bend controller set to 0.
Looks like the pitch-floating disappeared.
It was happening after a couple of seconds of sustain on any note.

[Brad Saucier]

If you can make a recording of anything suspicious and post it, that would help us figure out what's going on with it.

[sslyutov]

9 minutes ago, Brad Saucier said:

If you can make a recording of anything suspicious and post it, that would help us figure out what's going on with it.

As I said so far so good.

Once it will happen again I make a short recording.