Cleaning Your CZ-101

[jora]

Hi All,

 

After seeing how incredible the Casio CZ-101 sounded, I ended up buying one off Ebay for a decent price. I expected it to come looking a little rough, and wanted to ask how I could best go about cleaning or refurbishing it? As you could see in the images, the volume fader has some gunk inside of it. The top section has a few scratches and marks. Some of the buttons are a little harder to press than others. Lastly, the keys are slightly dirty(which I've read is usually solved with a damp cloth). Are there any suggestions for how I could best go about cleaning this unit? 

 

Thank you.

[Jokeyman123]

Just mild soap and water-carefully so you don't get any water inside-using a damp cloth. Pipe cleaners, cotton swabs can help-but cotton swabs will leave fibers-I like pipe cleaners for small areas. I do this with all my keyboards although I have covers for everything to keep dust out of the key actions and buttons. as far as buttons-I would be careful how you deal with those. Id' take mine apart and see what the switches are first-some button switches are sealed and cannot be corrected by external cleaning. so called"clicky" or ruber clicky buttons are like this-I know from experience. I alittle mild alcohol solution might be OK-but you can take paint off the finish with it if not careful-I always clean keys this way-I am a bit germo-phobic!  CZ-101 nice little keyboard-my first Casio.

[Chas]

The best way to clean it thoroughly is to take it apart. Then you can thoroughly wash the plastic parts in warm soapy water, and get better access to all areas of the smaller individual plastic parts to clean them. 

 

Regarding the buttons not working quite as well as they should, this is a known issue. They are activated by silicone rubber domes with a carbon (I think) pad under them. When pushed, these carbon pads come into contact with exposed traces on the circuit board. When they start working intermittently, it's either that the circuit traces have developed oxidation causing poor contacts, or the carbon pad has lost some of its carbon content. These can be rectified by cleaning the oxidization off the circuit traces, and/ or adding carbon to the pad by using a soft lead pencil. Both will require dismantling to achieve this.

 

Taking the keyboard apart is not that difficult if you take the time. Check out the YouTube channels 8 Bit Keys, and also Keen on Keys, as both often show a keyboard being disassembled, cleaned and then reassembled. 

 

8 Bit Keys:

 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcTt3O4_IW5gnA0c58eXshg

 

Keen on Keys:

 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE8ya-n9pNdlvaJCOH7KHLA

[IanB]

Just to add to the previous excellent advice, if you do disassemble the keyboard, do so with care as this is an old machine and Casio don't carry spares! Ribbon cables can be fragile- it's not the wire, it's the plastic ribbon, so don't overstress them. Be particularly careful around the LCD display as if you damage its ribbon it is basically impossible to repair. Also I don't want to be too dramatic here- dismantling these keyboards is commonplace and not difficult. Just treat it kindly, like any other 40 year old

[pianokeyjoe]

To add, the buttons sometimes getting "STUCK" is due to gunk from fingers and dust over the years building up AROUND the plastic button caps and inside the button cap HOLES. When you take the CZ apart, clean each individual button cap by using your fingernail and scraping off the gunk from each one then washing them as recommended above by Chas and IanB. For the HOLES, if your fingers are small enough, you can scrape the gunk too with your fingernails but I think in that case it will require a small hard plastic thin tool to scrape the gunk. Why? Cause if you do not do this, when you put everything back together, you still will have buttons staying pressed down.. an annoyance I had to endure several times lol!