Before going into work with JX I cleaned the keyboard in the last few days. The keys were sticky and smeary from nicotine and dirt, so I put them all into denture cleaner over night and on the next day brushed them with dish liquid.

A small plastic strip on the bottom side of the keyboard must be removed to get the keys out. It puzzles me that Roland glued the strip instead of choosing a solution that would be faster to recover at service. One also has to manually (un-)clip 61 springs with a pliers, one for each key. Compared to the Yamaha keyboard on the Korg 01/W this is cumbersome.

Having the best opportunity, I checked the aftertouch sensor for proper operation. As you may read on analog.no or synthzone.com, early JXs may suffer from oxidation on the metal films of the sensor. With not having the sound engine operational yet, I measured the resistance changing on pressure and, to my feeling, didn’t find any anormalities (equally somewhere below 20kΩ along the sensor).

Yesterday I fetched this classic piece of gear out of my cellar.

I am guilty. The cellar is wet and mouldy and a hostile environment for electronic equipment, but I closed my eyes and left poor JX vegetating there for the past ten years. A wedding musician gave it to me after it was worn and broken from heavy use. I remember that I tried to repair it but wasn’t successful in the end.

Dear JX, I promise to make up for your sufferings. To be continued.