Taking Apart a Yamaha P85

February 9th, 2011
keyboard, music, tech
On about the third day after I got it, our cat knocked a potted plant over onto my new keyboard. I was sad. I turned it over and shook it (the keyboard, not the cat as much as I wanted to) which got most of the dirt out, but over the past few weeks I've been noticing that the keys that got dirt on them are a little less responsive. So yesterday I decided to open up the keyboard and clean it. This turned out to be a lot of work. After looking online to see if I could find a Yamaha P85 service manual anywhere, or even instructions for working on one, I eventually just sit down and did it.

The first question I had, looking at the keyboard from the bottom and seeing the 40-odd screws, was how many I needed to remove to open the case. Turns out it's *all* of them. There are a very large number of identical silver screws, one black screw, and then four little black screws holding on a plate. They all need to come out. The tiny screws can only go in one place, but it would be good to remember which hole the other black screw goes in. Behind the little plate is a circuit board with two ribbon wires attached. Those need to come off if you're going to separate the top and bottom keyboard halves. Unlike an ide cable, the hard plastic bit at the end is part of the circuit board, not the cable. The cable should come off without too much force; if it's hard you might be pulling on the wrong thing.

Once I'd taken all the screws out and disconnected the ribbon wires, it came apart easily into a bottom half with the electronics and the speakers and a larger heavier top half with the keys and everything else. Cleaning the dirt out was mostly a matter looking for it and brushing it away. The worst places were where fulcrum of the key lever rotated against their housing because those are greased and the dirt sticks to the grease.

Putting it all back together took another half hour, but went fine. Now my keys don't stick!

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