Repairing a Yamaha display

[CharlieWorton]

It occurs to me that perhaps a better place to stick this would be down in the Yamaha keyboards space. If so, I'm sure I'll hear about it.

Back around 2006, in one of the brief periods in which I actually had money, I purchased a Yamaha YPG-525. This is identical to the Yamaha DGX-520; just a different name in a different market (the YPG stands for Yamaha Portable Grand; I have no idea what the DGX initials might stand for).

And at about the same time, I inherited a real Yamaha piano. I only had space to use one; so I chose the piano, and stored the YPG-525.

In 2014, the Gods of Finance snickered in my direction again, and I was able to sell my old house and buy a much newer one with almost 3 times the space. (Well, 'buy' is perhaps not quite correct; the bank and I own it together.)

Hooray! This meant I could set up the keyboard and use it! So I set it up, turned it on, and was greeted by this:

This renders the keyboard largely useless. It plays just fine, but without a display you have no idea what you're doing.

Insert great anger towards Yamaha here. Apparently this is a known defect; there's a ton of keyboards out there with the same problem.

So I let it sit, gathering dust, for a few years; and then this year, I decided to get somewhat more serious about my music. Clearly, if I was to use the keyboard, I needed to fix the display; but the cost to have a shop do the repair was approximately equal to the value of the keyboard. If not more.

So, I did a lot of research, read a lot of stuff on the web, watched a lot of youtube videos, took my keyboard apart and stared at the display, cleaned a few contacts, and...

It was still as dead as anyone born in 1750. Or even 1751.

So, throwing caution to the wind, I ordered this from AliExpress:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Ori...CD-Screen-Repair-replacement/32810594958.html

It's a replacement screen. Total cost, $76.66 CAD including shipping.

I've had my screen out, so I'm very familiar with taking it out and replacing it. I don't expect to encounter any problems. However, it will take about two months for the screen to arrive. When it arrives, I'll report on whether the process was successful.

Hopefully, if you have a similar display problem, this might help.

Take care, all - Charlie

 

[Becky]

You'd get on very well with my husband, he loves fixing things and he especially loves AliExpress!

I'm looking forward to hearing how it goes

 

[Biggles]

Good luck.

Deliveries can be at best inconsistant.

I have had small items shipped from China to the UK and it has taken 2 months, yet others shipped from Hong Kong have been at my door in the UK in 36 hours, go figure!

 

[CharlieWorton]

Biggles! Yes, there's no question that delivery times can be inconsistent at best. I buy a lot of stuff from AliExpress - mostly electronic components - and my all time record is receiving a product in early April. I had ordered the product the previous November. Anything shipped via China registered mail will take about 2 months to reach me; but if it's shipped e-packet, I get it in about 2 weeks.

Hey, Becky! thanks for the like.

Now, a bit of backstory: back in December, I lost my credit card. Following the obligatory frantic phone call to report the card lost and determine if it had been used fraudulently (it hadn't) I did, eventually, receive a new card. When I went to purchase the display from AliExpress, the old card number popped up. It gave me the option to use a different credit card, so I chose that; put in the card number, expiration date, cv number, blah blah blah. The transaction proceeded normally, and that was that.

Several hours later I checked my email and discovered that AliExpress had cancelled the transaction and referred the matter to their fraud investigation team. In the email they sent me, they provided a link to a web page that would provide me with more information; unfortunately, in true aliexpress fashion, it was a dead link.

It was then that I made what turned out to be an excruciatingly bad decision: I decided to try to contact them and find out what their problem was with my purchase.

You can't e-mail them. You must first use their customer service robot, allow it to run through all its stock solutions, and eventually turn you over to a human. You will then find yourself in conversation with someone using the Chinese equivalent of Google translate. And it's bloody awful.

I think I spent about 2 hours online, and was transferred to a different customer service agent. Eventually she decided that she would send me an email requesting the information they needed from me in order to continue doing business with me.

They wanted:

1) A photocopy of both sides of my passport.
2) A photocopy of both sides of my credit card.
3. A photocopy of my most recent credit card statement, and all the charges made on the card during that period.

No. That is so thoroughly not going to happen it's difficult to put into words. But I attempted to do so, in the strongly worded email I sent them. The phrase "You festering, inflamed, pus-encrusted necrotic piece of..." was in there. And worse. I wish I'd been there to see them run that through Google translate.

So at that point, I was dead in the water. Tried a few other Chinese vendors, no luck. Tried ebay, and found people drop shipping the same product from China and adding 20% to the price.

And then, I got brilliant; I remembered that I had installed the AliExpress app on my cel-phone. So I fired it up, updated my card information, ordered the product... success. No stupid email from the AliExpress fraud team, and today I got an email stating that the merchant had shipped the product. So at this point, it's on its way, and AliExpress can't change that.

Man. The things you have to go through, just to spend money.

I'll check back in when something of value shows up. Take care, all - Charlie

 

[SirLouie]

What ever came of this? Did the AliExpress part fix the issue? I saw a video on Youtube recently that showed a guy fixing it with two gaffer-tape-covered binder clips. I might try that first!

 

[CharlieWorton]

Hey, SirLouie - I did install the screen, and it worked just fine and continues to work to this day. To do the swap, you have to desolder two wires from the old screen and solder the new wires onto the screen; this is easily done, anyone who has ever soldered a wire will have no trouble. >Charlie

 

[SirLouie]

Hey, SirLouie - I did install the screen, and it worked just fine and continues to work to this day. To do the swap, you have to desolder two wires from the old screen and solder the new wires onto the screen; this is easily done, anyone who has ever soldered a wire will have no trouble. >Charlie

Nice! I recently tried the Youtube binder clip trick, and it worked perfectly to repair my half-working screen! I can't believe how many screws I had to remove though - it was over 100 :-o

 

[iXod]

Hey, SirLouie - I did install the screen, and it worked just fine and continues to work to this day. To do the swap, you have to desolder two wires from the old screen and solder the new wires onto the screen; this is easily done, anyone who has ever soldered a wire will have no trouble. >Charlie

Is the displayed text *exactly* the same size as the original? I’ve read that the Chinese replacements are a few dots short… and being small to begin with, there’s not much room for that.

I’m glad to hear only 2 wires need re-soldering.

Thanks!

 

[Joescott]

Nice! I recently tried the Youtube binder clip trick, and it worked perfectly to repair my half-working screen! I can't believe how many screws I had to remove though - it was over 100 :-o

Hey sir Louie. I have maybe the same problem. Could you post the YouTube link for the half working screen. This is the second time I’ve had a problem. 1st time was just after I bought it used and probably was unused for a long time. The left 1/2 of the display was all stripes and intermittent start-up / initialization problems. I was prepared to replace a capacitor that is talked about on YouTube but inadvertently left it powered on for a couple of days straight and it corrected itself. It worked great for several months. Sounds a lot like the situation that Charlie had where it wouldn’t work properly after coming out of storage.
Now the right 1/2 of screen is just blue. Could be the result of a recent power failure or me being a klutz. The head phone jack terminals might of shorted out when I caught the cord on something. Really don’t want to replace the screen yet.

 

[iXod]

Go to YouTube and click in the search field (the magnifying glass icon). Then type:

yamaha keyboard display binder clip

The first video is it!

 

[SirLouie]

Hey sir Louie. I have maybe the same problem. Could you post the YouTube link for the half working screen.

Sure, follow iXod's directions and it should lead you to this video:

You may notice my comment as the most recent comment there!

 

[SirLouie]

Also, in case the video doesn’t make it clear, the binder clip is placed to apply constant pressure to this point on the back of the circuit board. It’s okay to smush the ribbon cable between the board and the clip and both sides of the board - as long as your tape isn’t conductive it should be fine. In fact, I took off one of the "arms" of the binder clip and added more tape to ensure that the clip wouldn’t slip. Hope this helps!