Yamaha PSR S550 Keyboard

Hey Everyone,


I'm in the process of doing some servicing work on an old Yamaha PSR S550 keyboard, most of it seems to be in pretty good condition except for a broken LCD screen, fortunately I managed to buy a replacement on eBay, I got an email notification from eBay that my order had been sent in the post, hopefully it should arrive within a few weeks.

There's also a broken front panel button that needs fixing too, but shouldn't be too hard to fix, the good news is that I managed to find a pdf of the user manual and service manual on the internet.


Stay tuned for more updates.....

Replacing the old, buggered LCD screen in my Alesis was a doddle - once I'd found a replacement (A$30 from eBay US) - and once you've got the thing apart, you'll probably be shocked at the lack of stuff inside the casing!!

I've had a couple of Yamaha PSR keyboards back in the "couldn't-afford-anything-better" days. I had a PSR-420 that I recorded both a studio and a live album with a band I played with back in the late '90s. Sounded fairly respectable for what it was.

Those lower end keyboards really have gotten better and better over the years.

They normally use either cut-down audio engines, or the same audio engine but with less voices/samples, from more expensive models, which is why they sound good. No point in them re-inventing the wheel! The main Japanese keyboard manufacturers have really underperformed in the last 20 years or so in terms of development and new sounds. Very little new R&D, mainly repackaging existing sound systems, perhaps with better D/A converters and the occasional expansion of the number of samples held or the number of tracks in the sequencer. Some interesting. if not groundbreaking, workstation synths that do offer a little bit extra, but there's a lot of reliance on reproducing old analogue synth models. Which is nice in its own way, but adding a 16 step sequencer to a 70's synth design is probably not what '70s keyboard players were expecting to see from a synth in 2019!

I agree. Progress in that area has been disappointing, to say the least. I've been a Roland user since about '01; XP-10, XP-80, C-180, and PK-5. Pretty much everything they've put out since the XP series (and even before that, really) has been just repackaging the same stuff with new cosmetics, and different expansion boards ... ensuring you have to buy all new stuff to get the same sounds. My XP-80 still works just fine. Changed out the memory battery last year (after 17 years), and just recently upgraded the floppy drive to a USB floppy emulator. Maybe get another 17 years out of it.

Good News!!!

The replacement LCD screen I bought on eBay, for my Yamaha PSR S550 keyboard, is awaiting pickup at the post office at 4:00pm this afternoon.....Woohoo!!!!



Update:


Parcel finally arrived, here's a pic of the new LCD screen I ordered:

Attachment 30375


I'm going to leave installing the new LCD screen till this weekend as I've got a few other things to do.

Pics of my Yamaha PSR S550 keyboard:

Attachment 30384

Attachment 30385


As you can see, there are two usb ports on the back panel, one is for connecting to a computer and the other is for plugging in a usb drive, the old LCD screen is all cracked and needs replacing, fortunately I managed to source a replacement.


Bit of trivia here, did you know that the brand name, Yamaha, is actually the Japanese word for Horse?

Update:


Well....after some trials and tribulations, I finally managed to get my Yamaha PSR S550 keyboard fully working with it's new LCD screen, the first time I tried powering it up after installing the new LCD screen it wouldn't power up at all so I put my troubleshooting thinking-cap on, and it was when I was about to unplug the plugpack adaptor from the DC in socket that I found the cause of the problem, the DC in socket felt unusually loose and I immediately knew why, as it turned out there were two broken solder-joints underneath the circuit board where the DC in socket was soldered to the board, some tinned copper wire and solder fixed it completely and now the keyboard powered up, what's more, it also produced sound too.....so job done!!!


There's just one more issue that needs resolving, one of the D keys doesn't seem to trigger reliably all the time like the other keys, I'm thinking that maybe the circuit board contacts are a bit dirty and needs cleaning with some isopropyl alcohol, and there's a front panel button that's sitting lower than it's supposed to, but I reckon we've done pretty well so far, at least the keyboard is working anyway.

There seems to be two left-over parts remaining, a screw and a metal mounting bracket, not sure where they're supposed to go so I'll have to have a good read of the service manual to find out.



Here's a screenshot of the display I'm currently seeing on the new and installed LCD screen:

Attachment 30411


It sounds pretty good through the built-in speakers, but it'll be interesting to hear what it'll sound like through my 300 Watt Behringer K3000FX Keyboard amp.

This is exactly why I would have never made a good brain surgeon. When I take stuff apart and put it back together, there is always something left over haha

Well done, good job Doc

Update:


I finally figured out where the extra metal bracket and screw were supposed to go so that satisfies my OCD, turns out the bracket was supposed to be screwed into place just over the DC in socket, my guess is that it both provides reinforcement for the DC in socket and supports the bottom half of the bottom cover, there was a vacant screw hole where one of the circuit boards (called the AM board) was fixed into place by 5 screws, I think everything is accounted for now.

Oh yeah, I found out why two of the front panel buttons were loose in the process, one part of the circuit board was actually covering a mounting screw, this was easily fixed and the front buttons are as they should be now.


Next thing to do is to sort-out the miss-triggering D key, should just be a case of cleaning some contacts with some contact cleaner spray and a Q-tip.


The contacts underneath the miss-triggering D-key definitely were a bit dirty, hopefully cleaning them should fix it....we'll see.


Yay!!!!.....the miss-triggering D-key is now fixed!!!!


I think that's about as close to fully working as I'm going to get the keyboard......job done and dusted!!!!

Awesome work. My experience with Yamaha PSR keyboards is that they sound much better through a decent amp or PA than they do through their own speakers. Much fuller sound. Enjoy!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PJSprog

Awesome work. My experience with Yamaha PSR keyboards is that they sound much better through a decent amp or PA than they do through their own speakers. Much fuller sound. Enjoy!

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I happen to have a 300 Watt Behringer K3000FX keyboard amp with an 18 inch bass speaker in it, the PSR S550 should sound good through it but I haven't tried it yet though.


One thing I noticed about the PSR S550 is how easily it could be serviced, definitely helps to have a copy of the full service manual handy.

Top job Doc.

On my wife's side of the family there is an old valve small organ that isn't working and needs a new home and wondering how hard it might be to fix considering it may date back to 1960's?

Oh, should mention I know Jack $#%t about serious electronics which only adds to the degree of difficulty taking on a project like this. Any help or advice would be much appreciated.

Cheers, Waz

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wazkelly

Top job Doc.

On my wife's side of the family there is an old valve small organ that isn't working and needs a new home and wondering how hard it might be to fix considering it may date back to 1960's?

Oh, should mention I know Jack $#%t about serious electronics which only adds to the degree of difficulty taking on a project like this. Any help or advice would be much appreciated.

Cheers, Waz

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If you can find either a service manual, or some circuit diagrams on the internet for the organ, it might turn out to be fairly easy to fix depending on what's actually wrong with it, it might just be a case of replacing a valve, a resistor, or capacitor that's gone bad in order to get it working again, hard to say, what is the organ doing and not doing?


A lot of those old 60's organs are still worth fixing, and if it's a well known brand of organ, like Hammond, it could be worth a lot of money if it's in working condition, or restored to working condition.

I wouldn't mind scoring myself a nice Hammond L-100 organ in working condition, the organ player in Uriah Heep played one, the Hammond L-100 used all valve circuitry and electrically driven tone wheels to produce it's distinctive sounds.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DrNomis_44

I wouldn't mind scoring myself a nice Hammond L-100 organ in working condition, the organ player in Uriah Heep played one, the Hammond L-100 used all valve circuitry and electrically driven tone wheels to produce it's distinctive sounds.

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.... bearing in mind, of course, that a huge part of the Hammond sound was that Leslie speaker enclosure!! I use a simulator these days, but it's just not the same, eh!! :-)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by corsair

.... bearing in mind, of course, that a huge part of the Hammond sound was that Leslie speaker enclosure!! I use a simulator these days, but it's just not the same, eh!! :-)

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Yeah, although it is a good enough approximation, I know of at least one guy on youtube that actually made a small portable DIY Leslie speaker himself, try looking up Uncle Doug Leslie Speaker on youtube.

The tone wheel Hammonds sound glorious but my god are they heavy, I think the best combo was the B3 through a close mic'd 122 Leslie.

I'm sure Rabz will be along shortly to give a roadies view of this combo, they used to run for cover when they saw them

I certainly did!! Loved the sound though... still do, be it Keith Emerson, Thijs van Leer or Matthew Fisher!! My own playing is quite agricultural and not be mentioned in the same breath as the afore-mentioned players!

I use an old Alesis QS6 - which has some fabulous organ sounds -, and a rotary speaker emulator which suffices for what I do.

Hammond released a Digital version of the B3, called surprisingly enough the B3 II, would love to score one of them, basically they took the technology used in the original B3 and re-created it using modern digital circuitry, while still retaining all the nuances of the original B3, including the key-click and percussion.

Originally, the key-click was an unwanted by-product of the keyboard mechanism so Hammond tried removing it, but doing so also removed some of the character, so they decided to retain the key-click, the flaw became a feature that defined the sound of the Hammond Tonewheel Organ.

One feature of the mechanical Tonewheel system of generating all the notes is that the system never goes out of tune like a piano does, all the Tonewheels are driven by a synchronous electric motor.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DrNomis_44

I wouldn't mind scoring myself a nice Hammond L-100 organ in working condition, the organ player in Uriah Heep played one, ...

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I used to work with Ken Hensley. When I was a Quality Jerk at St. Louis Music, he was the Artist Relations Director. Super nice guy, full of incredibly entertaining stories.