Voltage problem? Error message?

olafhaugan · Post by **olafhaugan** » 16 Jul 2011, 19:42

Hi!

A few days ago I was playing a concert in front of seven thousand happy Norwegian people.
When I had the sound check suddenly my NS Compact Classic turned off.
When I restarted it, ALL THE RED LIGHTS ON THE WHOLE KEYBOARD WERE TURNED ON. The display did not work and of course no sound.

After fifteen minutes ore so in desperation the electricity on the whole arena went of. When the system engineers got the electricity up and running on the arena, the NS worked just fine.

My question is whether it could have been wrong voltage on the arena that caused the probleme whith the NS. My concern is that everything else on the venue was working just fine until the power went off. (a lot of wireless mics, computers, digital mixers, guitar amps and so on)

Do you think I can rely on my NS for the rest of the tour? (the staff at the Norwegian airports do not treat keyboards with love:-)

Has anyone had the same experience?

I have contacted Clavia about the problem, but they could not give me any concrete answer

I have got my new NS2 SW73 two weeks ago, but I don’t want to start using it in the middle of the tour, it takes some time to program it when nothing is compatible.

Best Regards, Olaf Hansen Haugan.

Post by **Hanon_CTS** » 17 Jul 2011, 00:49

olafhaugan wrote:Hi!

A few days ago I was playing a concert in front of seven thousand happy Norwegian people.
When I had the sound check suddenly my NS Compact Classic turned off.
When I restarted it, ALL THE RED LIGHTS ON THE WHOLE KEYBOARD WERE TURNED ON. The display did not work and of course no sound.

After fifteen minutes ore so in desperation the electricity on the whole arena went of. When the system engineers got the electricity up and running on the arena, the NS worked just fine.

My question is whether it could have been wrong voltage on the arena that caused the probleme whith the NS. My concern is that everything else on the venue was working just fine until the power went off. (a lot of wireless mics, computers, digital mixers, guitar amps and so on)

Do you think I can rely on my NS for the rest of the tour? (the staff at the Norwegian airports do not treat keyboards with love:-)

Has anyone had the same experience?

I have contacted Clavia about the problem, but they could not give me any concrete answer

I have got my new NS2 SW73 two weeks ago, but I don’t want to start using it in the middle of the tour, it takes some time to program it when nothing is compatible.

Best Regards, Olaf Hansen Haugan.

Hello Olaf,
Welcome to the forum!
I've had similar occurrences.
The last one resulting in damage to power supplies in eight instruments.
After that incident, I purchased a rack mounted power conditioner and uninterruptible power supply.
The price for the repairs was $1200
The power conditioner and UPS was $2200 but well worth the investment.

Just the power conditioner will shut off any unsafe power, without the UPS, your gear will be off. With the UPS, you'll still be playing. If the UPS is sized correctly, you'll have about 15 minutes worth of playing time before the battery dies, usually that's enough time for a stage hand to figure out the problem.

As for your situation, I'd speculate that there was a low voltage issue, had it been the other direction, at best, you'd have had to replace blown fuses on your gear, at worst, it would have been more like my problem.

I don't believe that your instrument sustained any permanent damage and wouldn't be overly concerned as to reliability. The Nord folks do worse than that to it as a final test before shipping it out.

Cheers, Hanon

olafhaugan · Post by **olafhaugan** » 17 Jul 2011, 01:31

Thanks for your reply Hanon!
And thanks to you and Johannes that you're doing such a great forum!
It is certainly a good and proper solution to this problem.

-Olaf

Post by **Johannes** » 17 Jul 2011, 10:42

I fully agree with Hanon, good quality power is Key for Key players. A Marhall Amp is much less susceptible to bad power than a COmputer with a Piano Keyboard such as the Nord Stage or any other high quality keyboard. While a UPS is probably more luxury, a power conditioner is a most if you play frequently in particular open air gigs.
I don't know whether the Nords are particular vulnerable, but I think it is the same with any modern Keyboard/Synth that do require some kind of booting up, lots of memory/RAM operations etc. rather than just working "out of the box" with a small ROM such as Casios or early Stage Pianos (Roland RD-x00,...).
The good thing is that the fuse seems to work and Ive heard of several occasions where the fuse blew and thus protected the Instrument. But on the other hand, it seems that low or "weak" power rather than spikes can be at least as harmful and are not protected against by the fuse. So I would definitively go the Power Conditioner way. It is definitively cheap compared to the hassle of being left without gear during a gig and/or having to replace it!

davidiliyn · Post by **davidiliyn** » 22 Jul 2011, 10:30

NS Classic is just to well known for voltage problems..have them myself..

LIke said above buy a UPS conditioner...i bought a cheap one (http://www.walmart.com/ip/CyberPower-CP ... u=13213821)
and have loved it so far. It dosnt have a lot of stuff furmans or others will have but will be better then nothing, it evens out my churches shitty power and dosnt pop my nord off anymore and the battery would last for a good 10 mins or more before it shuts off.

Post by **Klangwerk** » 22 Jul 2011, 13:23

Hi olafhaugan,

I had the similar problem with my Nord Lead 3 because of bad power supply.
Always when I had less than 170 volt the NL3 bootet new (power on/off).
I didn't have the problems with other synths or NS Classic.
But till my racksynth (fantom XR) loaded the samples it took about 2-3 minutes. It felt like 2 or 3 hours!
So I decided to buy a furmann power conditioner and stabilizer and USV. It holds the power up to 45 minutes.
I needed that stuff last weekend, we had a gig in a big tent and the power supply was rather bad. I was happy to have it.
But there is one difference of the NS classic to NS2:
When I start the NS2 I can hear a little "click" ( when I switch it on, and the NS2 get started).
I coudn't hear such a click on my NS C.

I think you can continue your tour with the NSC. Either it works or not. My opinion.

Cheers
Helmuth

olafhaugan · Post by **olafhaugan** » 22 Aug 2011, 00:04

Thanks for the replys guys!
I have not had the problem again, but plan to put a power conditioner in to the rack.

Cheers, Olaf

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