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My XP-80 has been a great keyboard for almost 5 years. My band plays 8 months out of the year, and we don't play the same venue two nights in a row, so there's a lot of setting up and tearing down, packing into a trailer, bouncing around, etc. Many of our gigs are outdoors in Florida heat and humidity, and I never had a problem with it...
Until now.
I was relieved (?) to see that others are beginning to report the random pitch bend problem. Dominic from Australia described it best: INCREDIBLY EMBARRASSING.
It first happened in rehearsal last season, but never happened out. Then this year, it was happening at almost every rehearsal. I took it home, plugged it in and ran it hard for 5 days. Never repeated the problem.
On day 6, I went to a gig, and immediately had this automatic pitch bend problem again. It would not go away. It occured to me that the only thing different during my home test was the dedicated electrical circuit. I asked engineering at the hotel to run me a clean, dedicated power line (we were running the whole band, a DJ and A/V off of 2 20-amp circuits). The dedicated line immediately cleared up the problem, and it was good all night. So, I MIGHT be on to something here.
This morning, I ran out to Radio Shack and got a high-quality UPS, with built-in voltage regulator. I'll use it at tonight's gig and report back later this week.
Since for all the previous years, in all the places we've played, I had not had this problem, I am still convinced that there is a problem inside the keyboard as well, and that it is suddenly sensitive to dips in voltage for some reason. My guess (and the guy at Radio Shack agrees) is that the built-in power adapter may be going. With all the use over the years, it may just be losing it's ability to keep constant DC current running to the processors if the AC voltage drops to, say, 105.
If my UPS does the trick for the next few gigs and rehearsals, my next step will be to replace the internal adapter. I will keep you all up to date.
Patrick
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