One Note Playing Intermittantly?

[tinyrubberchicken]

Hey,

I just got a used Virus KB off eBay and everything works great except for one note, the second G# up from the left. It plays at times but sometimes I have to press it a couple times or use extra pressure. In other words, using it for touch-sensitivity is basically impossible.

I was wondering if there was any way I could open the keyboard and perhaps clean the keys or use some compressed air to fix it. If so, could somebody give me a brief overview of how to go about doing this?

Thanks...your help is much appreciated.

[Juho L]

The half-dead key doesn't feel stiffer or otherwise different from the other keys? If so, then good news: because the key isn't totally dead the keyboard mat is probably only dirty. The bad news is that I wouldn't count on compressed air to work.

You could try compressed air anyways. There might be loose dirt instead of ordinary sticky mystery-matter, but I'm afraid even if it would work it would solve the problem only for a while - It only moves the grit inside, doesn't remove it.

Generally the only way to get the dirt out from there is to open it up and throughly clean the keyboard mechanism (usually cleaning the rubber mat is enough). Keyboard mats tend to gather grease, moisture, dust, grit, etc. which form strange sticky gobs.

If you have any doubts on opening the thing up by yourself carry your kB to local keyboard service. Better safe than sorry. You don't have to send it to Germany for official Access repair center because cleaning keyboard mechanisms is a standard procedure that any keyboard service can do. It shouldn't cost much.

[tinyrubberchicken]

Excellent...thank you so much for your help! The key feels just like all the other keys so hopefully it is simply some dust or gunk inside there. I'm planning on just taking it in and having it professionally cleaned like you mentioned.

Again thanks so much for the quick reply. This has definitely eased my mind.