Serious Issue - Nord Electro 3

[lloydlawrence]

Hi Guys,

First post on here but it's a negative

Was playing my NE3 today and all of a sudden there was a loud pop then a sudden loss of sound. The panel went blank for a few seconds and then there was a single red led in 8th drawbar so I tried hitting the panic button and nothing.

I switched it off then back on again and there is no sound output at all.

I have emailed Nord Keyboards but it seems to me as if I will be ushered towards a repair centre.

Has anyone come across this issue before? The NE3 is about 4 years old but has been hardly used over the years so I cannot understand why its failed on me like this with no warning.

If the issue is serious, has anyone got any ideas how much I am looking to have to put towards a repair?

I'm just about to buy a new board this week and I cannot believe my luck

If anyone can suggest anything I can try before I have to go down the repair route that would be great.

Thanks,

An angry Lloyd

[Mr_-G-]

Sorry to hear about this. I do not know what this might be, but I guess that there is little you can do other than getting it seen by a technician. Since at least one led remained lit, it is not a blown fuse, but something else.
Just to clarify, the panic button is just a Note OFF to each and all notes (and perhaps some of the controllers too) for those cases where you get hanging notes or a disconnected MIDI cable. It would not reset the OS.
Hope you can get it sorted (and cheaply).

[lloydlawrence]

I have tried reloading the OS - the KB is fine and is scrolling through all the menus just no sound output.

Spend most of the evening looking online for repairers - cannot believe an instrument as beautiful as this is sitting here not working

Will report back on costs ect once I have had someone look at it.

[pterm]

Hi lloydlawrence,
Your description certainly suggests a hardware failure.
Do you have zero audio: No left, no right, no phono? If any of those work, the answer will help the technician isolate the problem. If it's all the audio, I suspect a failure of one of the 12V or -12V supplies that power the audio amplifiers.

Did you notice any unpleasant and unusual smells coming from the board?

Based on my experiences with repairing consumer electronics (on a hobby basis) my guess is one of the electrolytic capacitors on either the 12V or -12V regulators failed. This could be a capacitor at the regulator's input or output. If you seek repair and they tell you they found a failed capacitor, I recommend you ask them to replace all identical capacitors (same capacitance, same voltage rating) during the repair. The parts cost should not be high, and the incremental work less than a similar repair in the near future: The capacitors likely came from the same batch, so often exhibit similar failures.

The electrolytic capacitors start to bulge as they near failure (and occasionally rupture at failure), so a competent technologist ought to notice this, and might advise additional repairs.

-pterm

[lloydlawrence]

No smalls coming from the board at all. I have a basic understanding of electronics and none of the symptoms of a blown main board are present. I have managed to get hold of the service manual for the E2 so I am hoping the architecture is similar to an extent.

I have spoken to a few repair shops and none of them seem to have much experience in repairing Nords as they don't seem to have them in very often and the prices per hour seem to be quite high!

[pterm]

If you haven't already, contact the UK distributor http://www.nordkeyboards.com/distributors for the authorized repair centre.

[lloydlawrence]

Already contacted the UK disti for Nord but interesting that I am yet to hear from Nord themselves!

[pablomastodon]

Primary responsibility for handling these types of matters falls automatically to the national distributor for the country in which you are located. Nord receives and reads ALL incoming support inquiries, but they are also auto-forwarded to that distributor for purposes of responding to customers and taking action as needed. The national distributors are better positioned to address these kinds of things for reasons of geographic proximity, language and familiarity with available repair/service resources. It's not that they don't wish to deal directly with you, but that the most efficient path to resolution will be through your national distributor. Having multiple communication lines open can create a "too many cooks in the kitchen" scenario, so they purposely take a back seat.

Are you actively engaged with anyone in UK on this?

Bless,

Pablo

[lloydlawrence]

Took it to a local repair shop this morning so will report back on their findings!

[lloydlawrence]

Turns out the fault is terminal and it needs a new motherboard so not quite sure if I'm going to go ahead with the repair or go through my insurance company. Lucky I had taken out cover on it.