swimcarrey Posted January 6, 2022 Share Posted January 6, 2022 (edited) Hey I just got this awesome old midi guitar [Casio DG-20] and I was hoping someone could help answer some of my questions. In the manual it says no sound will be made if you don't play hard enough but I'm finding I have to use, what I would call, excessive force to make it play. Is this normal? perhaps it just takes some getting used to...Something that initially attracted me to it was that it looked like it performed quite well but I'm having much more of a finicky experience. I could never use it in a live setting and would have to doctor the crap out of any recording with it in post. I'm planning on having a professional take a look at it. Is this a waste of time? Thanks. I can also link a video if my description of the issue isn't good enough. Edited January 6, 2022 by swimcarrey Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pianokeyjoe Posted January 7, 2022 Share Posted January 7, 2022 The sensors in the guitar are old and need either cleaning, or replacing. Each string has a ceramic piezo electric disc sensor and they are made of brass, and crystal and a ceramic insulator coating. Over time those do get more brittle and break or crack, etc. You have the same thing in Drum machines I found out. So yes, electronic repair man is the way to go. How do you know it is the physical sensors that are at fault? Plug a midi keyboard to the guitar's MIDI IN port, IF it has one, and play the internal sounds with the keyboard. If the sounds trigger instantly, then you just isolated your problem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swimcarrey Posted January 7, 2022 Author Share Posted January 7, 2022 Thank you so much! It has a midi jack. I feel like it's probably midi out but i'll try that. Great explanation Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pianokeyjoe Posted January 7, 2022 Share Posted January 7, 2022 Ok Midi OUT will not help. That just makes the guitar your midi controller. Ok you need to check this link first before opening your guitar up: https://newcome.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/casio-dg-20-guitar-teardown/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pianokeyjoe Posted January 7, 2022 Share Posted January 7, 2022 Be advised, the Casio digi guitar series used some funky proprietary pressure sensing contacts and chips on the neck to interact with the strings. The strings are NOT what I thought. Read the link carefully. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swimcarrey Posted January 8, 2022 Author Share Posted January 8, 2022 (edited) Yea, I actually read that article before and found that it's mostly about fixing the dead spots on the neck where as for me all my fretting is working fine but it's down at the bridge end where I felt the pressure threshold for a signal to trigger was too high. like i feel like I have to strum the shit out of it to get it to play and I was under the impression the dg-20 was more sensitive than that. I took it to an electronic instrument repair shop and the guy there said it was working fine...so it might just be me expecting too much from the guitar. I'm taking it to another gear tech whose much more of a mad scientist than the first guy I went to so he might have some answers/solutions for me. Tightening the strings provided a bit more resistance which is making it easier to dig in and play harder. What's getting to me is the first tech I talked to tried to convince me there's absolutely nothing anyone could do to improve the performance of the dg-20 which I thought was kind of disingenuous because I feel like if someone really wanted to they could make the damn sensors more sensitive. It might not be feasible but it has to be possible. Probably just a better idea to find a midi guitar I already like and don't have to modify. But I am stubborn and want this one to work the way I want it to so I will continue my dg-20 crusade. Well hopefully this tech wizard I'm seeing tomorrow solves all my problems Edited January 8, 2022 by swimcarrey 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pianokeyjoe Posted January 8, 2022 Share Posted January 8, 2022 Lol, amen! Strum the *&^% out of it lol! I feel your pain! Yes it is possible to make it more sensitive and actually it IS sensitive by default cause I remember playing these when I was a teen at the Navy Exchange in Puerto Rico's now defunct navy base. It sounded like the Casio MT520 that has those yellow drum pads on the face. So yea I agree with you that the first guy was not knowledgeable enough or just did not really care to dig further and just get paid. These kinds of things we either need a lover of the art of working on instruments or for us to know how to do it for ourselves. I chose the second path and even when to tech collage to learn more how to work on synths and indeed my entry interview I told them as such. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swimcarrey Posted January 9, 2022 Author Share Posted January 9, 2022 (edited) Totally. Turns out the guy I went to today does classes on how to build your own midi controller, etc, where you pay, essentially, for the parts and finish the class with your own to take home (not right now because of covid stuff). So I'm looking forward to that and learning some more self sufficiency beyond basic guitar and speaker wiring. I'll post again about the progress on the dg-20. Edited January 9, 2022 by swimcarrey 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pianokeyjoe Posted January 9, 2022 Share Posted January 9, 2022 Wow, I would LOVE that class! Amen! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swimcarrey Posted January 16, 2022 Author Share Posted January 16, 2022 So the guy had it for like a week but he cleaned all the sensors and everything and replaced all the 100 ohm resistors with 10 ohm. I don't know if it just needed a cleaning and maybe the resistor swaps was unnecessary but it works so much better now! back to normal. Only the musician is making mistakes, not the instrument. How it should be. lol. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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