I wanted to provide an update on this after receiving the new LCD display from Pablo and walking through the installation over the phone. This took approximately 45 minutes and I say MAJOR KUDOS to Pablo for his service and professionalism. We've met and hung out several years at the NAMM Show, but this is the first time I've actually needed to call upon him for a service issue.
I'll provide the steps I took here in case anyone is interested. I won't go into exhaustive detail, but here's the general approach.
- Open up the top of the NS2 EX Compact - requires the removal of a single screw on the bottom of the unit - the one this is out of alignment with the rest of the screws. Remove all of the screws along the back side of the unit above the audio/pedals/MIDI etc. Remove the three screws on each wooden end block. Carefully save all of these screws!
- Now you can lift up the top panel to free it from the bottom, but care is needed. Before it can be fully removed, there are two ribbon connectors that must be disonnected. There's enough slack to pull these free while lifting up the top half.
- Once the top panel is freed, it can be completely taken away for the rest of the surgery.
- Remove knobs - in my case, the LCD is on the left circuit board, so I needed to remove the master volume, rotary, and encoder knobs for organ and piano (4 knobs total). It takes a bit of force to pull these away.
- Flip the panel over and rest each end on a block or something to keep the buttons and knobs safe.
- I had to remove the left side circuit board to access the LCD section. This required removing about 15-20 screws holding the board in place. The mod wheel and pitch bend wires were left intact, but just had to be careful to not twist or pull on them too much. There's a bit of slack in them.
- Once the circuit board was free, I pulled it up at 90 degrees to access the LCD. Note that there are some black parts that connect each of the drawbar LEDs and the encoder LEDs...these kind of fall back into the metal part of the panel as you lift the circuit board.
- The LCD part was held in place with two very small screws/nuts. I had to carefully use a Torx and nut driver on each end to loosen them. This was some of the most meticulous surgery required.
- Once the screws were out, the LCD display easily came loose and it was also easy to pop in the new one. Then I simply reversed all of the above and reassembled the keyboard!
Here's what the LCD display part looks like:
Thanks again to Pablo and hope this is helpful to somebody one day.
