Can I FIX this 1980s Synth / Keyboard Beauty? 

I still have one of these. It cost me £600 in 1989. It works perfectly.

There is a special compound available specifically for repairing these worn pads. Caig Caikote 44. It works very well when used properly. I've used it on synth keyboards and other carbon membranes. You must let it dry thoroughly before reassembling.

This YAMAHA PORTASOUND PSS-680 was my second keyboard, in the 80s, where I practiced Musical Composition. Currently I still use it (and I have two) despite having a Recording Studio with a lot of modern equipment.

John Shuttleworth would be proud of that repair, well done Vince! Ooof 🤓

A good use for used solder braid is for cracked PCB trace repair for thick tracks.

Just can't thank you enough for your sweet support, Vince It feels so GOOD to have you by our side 🙌🙌

Had One back in 80's bought in Chicago in USA, brand new and after I exchanged in my many trades...many years out of sight ..it has return to me.. and that one will be kept. It was part of my Musical venture when teen. Great video. Thanks!

Hi Vince...i use REMOTE RESTORE to restore flex boards of remotes and controllers it's carbon paint in spray... i spray a bit in a little container and use a paint brush to redo the pads ! works amazingly !

Before you pulled the roll off copper tape out, I was thinking hole punch and copper tape would suit that out. Great video as ever Vince.

For the conductive buttons, try thinning a blob of silicone sealant with lighter fluid until it's like a thin paint then add graphite powder until the consistency thickens a little. Scratch the faulty pad with sandpaper, clean with IPA then apply a thin coat of your conductive silicone paint.

I had one. I've been spending many hours a day when I was 15 playing guitar over the backing tracks I recorded with it. Super useful. And music is still my job after 30 years, so yes, I suppose it was actually useful. Thanks for sharing this, dude!

Big V has now set the standard for playing us out in every video. Absolutely loved it!

According to the Argos catalogue of Autumn/Winter 1988, says on page 281, item 17, that the RRP was £249.99, but they were selling it by then for £199.95. Looking through old Argos PDF catalogues are always a nice place to grab old prices from here in the UK.

My freinds brother used to have this model back in the day and it was so impressive we had lots of fun playing it

I had one of these back when they came out (I was in Secondary School). Amazing keyboard. Learnt how to finger drum with it, but the blue pads were the first things to die. Great job restoring it!

For the drum pads, best option I found was to use kitchen foil. Use a paper hole punch to get the perfect size, glue shinny side of the tin foil to the 'middle' contact as you ONLY need one of these on each of the pad, (just the one contect in the middle). Glue wise, the green pritt stick that glues everything including metal is what I used, leave for 24hrs to dry just for good measure. Depending how much you use the keyboard you may find the start/stop pad might loosen just a tad if you use the drums and record a lot, it will still work though. BTW the space between contact and board is so tight that cutting off the middle contact which I have done, and replacing them with a brand new one can cause some to continuously touch, its not like a TV remote gap but a hairs width tight. Wish someone could come up with a 3D printed replacement that has space to use any modern day console controller contact.

Vince, my 6 year old granddaughter absolutely loves her Yamaha keyboard which she inherited off her mum who got it as a present in the mid 80’s.

Wow! Brought back some memories when you hit the demo button there! I had 1 of these when I was younger. It had a quite nice FM synth section and was my first venture into synthesis ha Biggest secret to this as a relatively cheap home keyboard is that it also had midi ports. I had mine hooked up to my Atari St and used as a controller keyboard for other synths for a few years. Great video!

I had one in the early 90s. A fun key board/drum machine. Really came into its' own when coupled to a DAW (Music X on an Amiga) . Copy n paste a track then detune that using a a tiny amount of pitch bend. Sounded great.

Nostalgia trip really. I had a buddy many many many years ago, he was showing off his synthesizer skills all the time. All the kids would just gather round whenever he would bring his Yamaha to school.

The "weird thing" that happens on the left side of the keyboard is because you have it in chord/accompaniment mode where you can play with different accompaniment styles. I had a Yamaha PSS-170 as a kid. That thing is an absolute BEAST! :D

I had one of these. It was a brilliant little keyboard. Made some great music with it.

Wow that brings back good memories, I had that exact same model as a kid for Christmas. I thought I was a musician at the time. Brilliant video mate..

@29:50 if you're concerned with false presses try small strips of aluminum cut to shape of the pads only and a very small dab of glue on one side to adhere to the pads. I did this on several of the tamagotchis I repaired on my channel. Those membranes are still working really well.

Had a bust one of these years ago. It just went a bit loopy. I think these days I'd stand a chance of fixing it but back then I was clueless. I even saw one outside someone's house next to the bins a few years back. Wish I'd grabbed it.

I fix these as a hobby. I have a vast collection of 70s 80s 90s vintage synthesizers. Good video Vince!!

Blimey… had one of these synth when I started to to compose melodies in My early 20’s. Now I’ve become professional over the yrs. Way to go Yamaha 👏👏👏

You can make your own CA glue kicker out of 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda and 1/4 cup of purified water. You can also spray CA glue with alcohol and it functions as a kicker. The baking soda route is better because it actually makes the glued joint stronger. For fixing worn down carbon, the MG Chemicals Rubber Keypad Repair Kit works perfectly and it's a long time solution.

1988, my 9th birthday, I had the PSS780. Best birthday ever!!! Great video

I had a problem with my guitar hero controller's fret buttons which weren't registered every time. I just bought "remote control rubber buttons" in pack with glue. Those conductive rubber pads really made controller work again. Look them up :) I didn't play on the controller for 100 hours, but the glue really set them well. Of course you will have to change them again after some time, but that shouldn't happen just after few hours of playing ;)

Just checked when your Walkman video was (as that was one of the first I saw, I think you were in the low 10k's or maybe less in terms of subs) and it was 4 years ago! Can't believe how time flies. Glad to see you/your channel are doing well mate, always enjoyable to watch and taught me tons.

14:49 Vince, for faders and carbon track switches you should be using the green DeoxIT, not the red one. The red one will deoxidize the carbon oxide layer (there are some questions about that) and we don't want that;). The red one will work for now, but you are shortening the lifespan of that volume fader. EDIT: The green one also has some lubricant for faders or you can even get a dedicated fader grease. It's also safe with plastic parts. I've seen some videos about old audio receivers being doused with the red DeoxIT and then some composite material boards simply disintegrating.

I used to own one of these. Totally loved it. You could record 6 tracks of music and would loop your creations. Even made a sick little G-funk track on it. A bit of a gem, even though it sounds awful by todays standards. The FM synthesiser was great fun too Turn up the feedback to get some really narly sounds.

I'm glad I came across this video - brought back a lot of memories. Back in High School, we had the next model up the 780. Not that I was any good on the keyboard, but, I always loved these machines. I ended up buying a Yamaha PSR-47 when I started working that I tried to learn to play but, can only play a little bit. I managed to acquire a PSS-480 for my eldest son from a car boot sale for £3 then I managed to get myself a Yamaha PSR-4500 from Ebay.

I remember a carbon paint that came in a very small jar for repairing the membrane buttons on remote controls. As I recall it worked pretty well but took a long time to dry.

I've still got a fully functioning PSS 790 - the one with the joystick and multi-channel recording. Cheers for the blast from the past 🙏🏽

These old keyboards have a certain charm. I did a similar repair on the power connector and headphones jack of my Roland E15, which I bought used. Luckily there was no circuit board damage in that case, but just some cracked solder joints. So just resoldering these connectors was enough to get it fixed.

Hiya Vince. You can get Carbon conductive paint, maybe it would work better than the silver paint? Worth a try just to see what this carbon paint is all about. Another enjoyable video. Cheers. PS. Farnell seems to sell it.

I had the PSS 790 as a kid, my friend across the road had the 680, he played better than me though. Great repair, never seen underneath them drum pads before, loved it Vince.

Oh, and you published this video on my 52nd birthday. 35 years after I got the keyboard.

We have this keyboard, at work it was donated. I work in a disabled day centre, where I do music with them. Our one still works, and we plug all the instruments guitars and synths, though a small pa and have a jam Tuesday afternoons. Our drummer, plays the donated drum kit over the top. For a retro keyboard it's got some nice, sounds and settings on it.

My sister and I got keyboard like this one birthday - we ended up jamming together on them bashing out Jean Michel Jarre tunes. We took them to camp and performed on them in the talent quest and won :) I can chord now but back then "Auto chord" was a blessing :)

I have a pss-480. Haven't dug it out in years. It's similar except for the pads. Bought mine from Tandy in the 80s

Hey Vince, I don't know if you're still monitoring these comments, but in the past I have used that aluminum tape that you can get in the HVAC department of your local hardware store and just cut little squares of it, I didn't even round them off, and stuck them onto the membrane contacts.Or I guess you could get a small punch and punch out a bunch of round ones. I haven't tried it on a keyboard, but it has brought several of my remote controls back to life and seems to adhere surprisingly well. I fixed my Sony amplifier remote about 2 years ago and it is still going strong. Plus it will add a bit of thickness to the membranes if you think they are worn down. Cheers

You were able to use a tube of superglue on two separate projects? And it didn’t harden in the tube in between? Truly, this is an age of wonder and miracles.

I have a Pss680, bought off ebay with a blown audio IC, changed it & now working. It's a good keyboard, only thing I wish it had was full size keys. I have used a pencil to repair worn out carbon pads, it lasts quite a while before needing to be done again.

With the loose power supply DC plug, if it isn't the original power pack that came with the unit, you might find the hole in the DC plug has a different size than the pin in the socket. Common sizes are 5.5mm x 2.1mm or 5.5mm x 2.5mm. The larger one can fit on the smaller pin but will feel loose and may not make contact at all. There are also adaptors available to go from one size to another, search "2.5mm DC Plug to 2.1mm DC Socket Power Adaptor" or "2.1mm DC Plug to 2.5mm DC Socket Power Adaptor". The different sizes are to do with the current handling of the plug, 2.1mm is usually for low current devices (like CCTV cameras) pulling only an amp or so. 2.5mm is designed to carry a couple of amps or more.

Great fix I have in the past used a very soft HP pencil and had no issues with it failing later on. I noticed near the socket you repaired where the screw holds the board down it looked like a track maybe cracked near the fixing hole might be worth checking just incase it is open circuit. Time stamp 2.56 near the screw if you look at the video.

Raced to get to one of the few of these we had in music lessons at school, absolute beast! Amazing some of the stuff you could get it to do.

@mymatevince The material you're looking for is CaiKot 44. It's a bit pricey, but it's a carbon/silver conductive paint specifically for membrane repair. I have had good success with it. Cheers!

I remember as a kid spending an entire night playing with that keyboard, borrowed from a friend. I knew it wasn't the best thing compared to what I wanted but it was still a ton of fun being my first experience with multi timbral synths with recording.

I had one of those back in the day. Exact same model. Based on the Yamaha FM synths like the DX7 at the time. Eventually led me to owning a load of real synths and a studio in the 1990’s.

Guitar cavity shielding paint works great on contact pads. I used it to repair a MIDI controller key a few years ago, and it still works.

I got one for my Christmas. I'd be around 12. It came from Dixons. The edition before had yellow pads. Was approx £180.

I had this exact keyboard when I was 17 and it was brilliant. And, incredibly, I found another one in Cash Convertors about two months ago which is in full working order. It's need a clean up and maybe some straightening of the keys, plus a door for the battery compartment, but it all works. £50 quids.

I used to have one of these and I had hours of fun which gave me an insensitive to eventually upgrade. I've had a few yamaha keyboards and every one I've had has taught me a lot. But the one I have right now is a yamaha tyros 1 and it's been playing up a bit so reluctantly I'll have to open it up and try to remedy the problems. Great video mate 👍🏽 👌

That demo tune at the end brought back memories!

Great fix Vince! Definitely had a few of these in the music room of my secondary school. Always used to be a battle as to who could get the best keyboard to mess around on, and most of us were tone deaf 😂. If this had been in a school, it could explain the wear on the drum pads. None of us kids could play a tune, but we all thought we were gods gift to drumming 😂

my buddy linked me this video because I inherited one of these from an older family friend, very cool

We used to have these in our music lessons at school in the 90s.. made some sick beats with those drum pads lol

@Mymatevince next time try baking soda with super glue. It makes really strong bond and hardens quickly. Few layers should be more than enough.

Back pre 2000 I used to do Tech Support for Schools and Colleges in Cornwall. There was a special Yamaha Carbon Grease for the membrane pad contact points, usual service item at the time, but my google searching was unable to locate it. The Power jack/broken PCB problem was a frequent one we would see, easy enough to fix with superglue and 14 gauge tinned copper wire as long as the remnants of the PCB were viable (if I recall we had a DX100 that kept coming back, I personally repaired the PSU plug part of the board 4 times at least! Bloody kids!)

Nice repair. For the power input, I wonder if it would have been worth mounting a power socket on the case, cutting away the board section where the power input was, then running wires from the input jack to the board.

One of the greatest machines ever created in the history of everything ever! I had one when I was 15 and you could use it like a complete recording studio creating recorded tracks to play along with. The synthesiser was amazing, and it taught me how sound envelopes work. To think this thing was primarily sold as a toy in WHSmith and the like, presumably because of the mini keys, it's only real downside.

Still have mine in full working order. Great keyboard in the day. Works great in midi mode too. I now use a DAW and VST’s.

I've had one of these from new and it was a great intro to keyboards/synths etc. Also used the MIDI with my Atari ST but, sadly, the ST is long gone. The PSS-680 is still in great condition though and is in deep storage under the bed. As I now do synth repairs as a hobby this was a great repair video and, yes there are lots of conductive carbon paint solutions made just for this kind of thing. Just look for rubber key pad repair paint.

Hallo VInce, for repair the trace like this i use a used solder-wick. The wick is allredy sucked with solder. I put it on repair parts and soldering it on the traces with litle bit of solder. It´s second life for the wick🙂

I had this as a kid brings back so many memories I never learnt how to play it but was fun to mess around on

I had one of these when they came out. They do still look good today. I recall a 'super accompaniment' option.

took me back hearing the demos again. my first synth, paired with Music X on the amiga

instead of activator just sprinkle with bicarb and brush excess off , works the same

I had that as my first keyboard. I remember it being about £180 but on sale at Comet. One of the drum pads split very early on!

Use a Hole Punch in the right size and punch copper plates out of your copper self glued tape, then use emery cloth/paper to roughen the silicon and glue the copper plates on it.

My next door neighbour's parents bought him one of these exact keyboards shortly after it came out. I also had to make do with something miniscule costing £30. The thing about these keyboards with their racks of presets and style accompaniments was that they were fun to play with even if, like me, and in fact my neighbour's kid, you had no musical theory knowledge or playing skills. Nowadays everyone's a bedroom producer and I suppose the modern equivalent of this is buying loop packs to drop into your DAW. And I seem to remember seeing these sell for £199.99 on the High Street but never saw them get any cheaper, they'd usually be replaced a couple of years later with a new model at the same price point. I seem to remember this model being the most expensive consumer-grade keyboard you could buy on the High Street without going to a specialist music shop for 'serious kit' - these kind of things were classed more as home entertainment than aimed at actual musicians, hence the fact they were available at the likes of Dixons, Argos and Rumbelows, even though Yamaha were also making top end synthesizers at the time, they got sold through music shops instead. edit - also I'm fairly sure those bad membrane connections is why a lot of us lost interest in the instruments after we'd had them for a while. They couldn't stand up to six months of finger banging... I mean "drumming" - without starting to lose accuracy and after a while it became hard to play a beat in time.

I owned one of these. Oh my the memories when you hit the demo song.

That was my dream synth from childhood. Never had it.

Use the braid you just used to clean up the board makes a very sturdy connection and it doesn't end up in the bin

I have a PSS 790 tucked away in a cupboard. Complete with power supply and user manual.

I own this very keyboard. Have the original box. Owned from new since approx 1989-1990!

Nice! I had one of those and funnily enough I was thinking about buying one again - it has what I think is THE best demo track of all synths of its type for the day, a very capable unit with basic FM and a 6 track recorder. Many years of fun was had! I seem to remember it costing my parents about £150, but man that was bargain of the decade for all the use and abuse it got! lol

I got a lesser model than that one Christmas around 1987. It played 'Don't go changing' for its demo tune as it went through all of the sounds. I certainly remember trying to play Crash by The Primitives on it when that came out in 1988. I bought another similar one around 1997 to use as a MIDI controller, which I still have. Great Fun!! :)

Another great video Vince! For this sort of repair I have successfully used small disks cut from thin cooking foil (aluminium foil), stuck in place with superglue.

I tried most of the fixes, the silver paint (expensive) did quite a good job, but did fail in time. When doing an Atari games machine the joysticks are the same carbon contacts, nothing seemed to stick on them, I ended up buying a carpenters wide carbon pencil, put a dod of superglue where the contacts are and scraped the carbon from the pencil on to the glue. It's still going after aprox 3 years now. I've since fixed a few hand controllers with no problems.

I've bought a electronic drum pad which doesn't power on (I knew this in advance) and this video has given me some tips on what to check when I switch it on! :)

graphite pencil on the rubber button black pads works, saved a few TV remotes this way.

I wouldn’t say just your kids when I try to show my daughter things that amazes me when I was younger sometimes I have to check for a pulse a different generation for sure

As for the worn carbon on the buttons, what I used to use, long long ago, was a product called, Aquadag spray that I used to use to recoat the bell of CRTs (picture tubes). Sadly, yet logically, I can't find this same product anywhere now. I do see some tiny bottles of Aquadag with small brushes, but I don't know how good those are or work. Plus, if/when they are available, they are RIP-OFF EXPENSIVE!!! I used to buy the big spray cans of Aquadag for around $10, I think it was. So long ago, I can't really remember. I just remember that it wasn't crazy expensive. Oh to have a time machine with a shopping basket on it. LOL 😁✨👍

wow !!! i had one of them back in the day and before that i had the PSS480 (without the drum pads) ..

The tune on the keyboard highly reminded me of the kiss song ''i was made for lovin, you''

My smaller version, the 480, has had silver paint on the buttons many times and is still going strong. The FM synth of these devices is still very very cool.

Thanks for this video - I had one of these and it brought the memories flooding back!

Nice job! I had the same power jack issue on a Sega Genesis, still working strong 10+ years later. I also have the PSS-480 from this series, they are actually really powerful synths!! If you plug this in to an external audio system, even just a stereo console, they sound SSOOO much better than through the small built-in speakers.

Am really glad that this thing is not in my house, but a good video again ;)

I’ve used aluminum foil cut to the shape of the carbon pads, and silicone glue to stick them on, to fix a remote control where some of the buttons stopped working. Great fix Vince. Another wonderful video. Best wishes from the USA,

Hello again, the drum pads do tend to wear out after a while, though you’ll probably find it. It’s just the contacts on the back of them and you can probably improvise somehow to be able to reuse them. There are a total of 32 different drum sounds I’m sure you’ll find in good time. I’ll continue to watch the rest of your video as it is extremely interesting as to, I’m very much into music keyboards, including this old vintage stunning synthesiser keyboard.

Great idea with the copper tape my partner puts it around her plant pots to keep slugs an snails at bay 😊😊

Very good! It sounds like there is an FM synth in there 👍 like the Sega Mega Drive uses.

Dammit. I have a pss 680 and I never thought I'd ever see it on Vince's channel one day!

Graphite from a pencil does work. You could try "lock lubricant" graphite powder thinned with PVA glue.

This was my very first keyboard, always wish i kept it!