I live in Central America and all my musical instruments eventually get ruined by the humidity and salt air. Now the day has come that both of my MOXF6’s, the main and the spare are doing odd things. The main had a freak out back in Feb 2020, so I shipped another down as a back-up and now it’s going, too. I would love to get them serviced, cleaned up inside, whatever, but there is nobody in the country I live in even remotely qualified.

(BTW The troubles I’m having with one unit is causing the volume to suddenly drop to almost silent out of the blue. If I quickly toggle the Voice back and forth it sometimes resets itself. But that may hold, may not, till the end of the Song. And I’m performing LIVE, so it’s not something I can work around. It seems to favor channel Parts 10 and 11 (where I put my kick and snare) but if I cursor to Edit mode on another random Part, it’s just as likely to suddenly do the same thing on THAT channel—the volume drops to almost nothing but the events are all there, velocities in the 100s.)

So I’m in a serious pickle. 

The closest Yamaha authorized service is in Mexico, the bordering country. But the cost and effort of driving to Cancun or Mexico City just to drop a couple keyboards off for servicing is prohibitive. But it’s an option, so I won’t rule it out. Doing nothing seems kind of dumb because I can no longer rely on either keyboard in a live situation. 

So I’m faced with the dilemma—dare I open them up and do some cleaning on my own and hope I accidentally make some improvement? It’s not my area of expertise, for sure, but if I can’t use them to perform LIVE then they’re just expensive doorstops anyway, so why not....? 

Any opinions? What would YOU do in the same situation? It’s likely that a qualified repair person might know just what to cannibalize from each unit and cobble ONE usable keyboard out of it. Maybe some general cleaning of things on my own would cause one or the other keyboard to suddenly go back to normal. Is it worth opening the keyboard up and risking some other damage or incorrect re-attachment of a part, so forth?

I’m a very slow and careful and meticulous person and if there were instructions, I’m pretty confident I’d avoid any major mess-up. Is there a source at Yamaha for technicians to refer to when doing this kind of work?  Would that be helpful, or only embolden me in a bad way?

muscarella - 23 February 2021 07:50 PM

I live in Central America and all my musical instruments eventually get ruined by the humidity and salt air. Now the day has come that both of my MOXF6’s, the main and the spare are doing odd things. The main had a freak out back in Feb 2020, so I shipped another down as a back-up and now it’s going, too. I would love to get them serviced, cleaned up inside, whatever, but there is nobody in the country I live in even remotely qualified.

[...]

I’m a very slow and careful and meticulous person and if there were instructions, I’m pretty confident I’d avoid any major mess-up. Is there a source at Yamaha for technicians to refer to when doing this kind of work?  Would that be helpful, or only embolden me in a bad way?

While I’ve successfully “talked” people through troubleshooting and repair of Motif-family models, I’m not offering such assistance in this case. Intermittent problems, especially ones that may be related to corrosion, are the bane of even service pros. That coupled with an inexperienced person, no matter how “careful and meticulous”, is a recipe for a potentially poor outcome.

Since you asked, here’s a link to the Yamaha Service Manual:
https://elektrotanya.com/yamaha_moxf6_moxf8_sm.pdf/download.html

This is something that purports to be from Yamaha, but is more likely a forgery:
https://elektrotanya.com/yamaha_moxf6_moxf8.pdf/download.html

Note that I’m in no way suggesting that anyone who isn’t sufficiently experienced in electronics should open their MOXF. Even running the diagnostic Test Mode can be misleading, since the results can be easily misinterpreted in some cases. Proceed at your own risk.

I went ahead and bought yet another MOXF6 and will have it shipped down, after which I will see if I can somehow get the other two up to the Yamaha service center in Cancun for a diagnosis. Maybe just do a basic cleaning on each of them. When I brought my MOX8 to Cancun several years back, cause it was freaking out, playing random notes and noises, etc. The Yamaha technician opened it up and cleaned all the contacts and to my surprise that actually resolved things. So I know that the condensation and salt corrosion can wreak havoc but also that a thorough cleaning is worth the effort if I can figure out a reasonable way to get the instruments to a qualified technician.