Where to buy Musical Keyboards

[ali_asadzadeh]

Hi,
After tearing down a Roland E14-OR device, I was surprised how these beauties where built! the most difficult challenging part is the mechanical keypad, I wonder where it can be bought from china?

Note: every pin has a two carbon switches, with a little ramp between them, so the harder and faster you press the keys, it can measure the time between keypresses so it can act like a normal piano!


Do you happen to know a Chinese manufacturer where I can buy the keyboard?

A Modern MCU or a midrange FPGA can do the job.

Some more pictures

[Berni]

Why would you want to buy just the keyboard anyway?

If you are interested just in the keyboard part you can buy pure MIDI keyboards that don't make any sound, but just spit out the raw key presses via MIDI commands.

[MarkMLl]

If you are interested just in the keyboard part you can buy pure MIDI keyboards that don't make any sound, but just spit out the raw key presses via MIDI commands.

Although the "feel" is enormously variable. It certainly used to be possible to buy the mechanical part of a keyboard, it was a standard part of every "build your own electronic organ" project with lots of home-made contacts using gold-plated wire.

MarkMLl

[ali_asadzadeh]

Why would you want to buy just the keyboard anyway?

Doing a DIY project based on a ZYNQ maybe!

[IDEngineer]

I understand exactly what the OP is asking about.

Back in the original days of keyboard synthesizers, a company called Pratt-Reed ruled the OEM keyboard world. Everyone bought their keyboard assemblies from them, and they'd sell you single units of anything they made. Want one of the inverse color white-on-black style, five octaves (60 keys), created for a specific customer? No problem! Just say "I want the keyboard from the Moog XYZ" or whatever and they'd happily ship you one. An absolute boon to those of us who toyed with homebrew synths back in the day.

Alas, Pratt-Reed is no more. And as someone else noted, everything is MIDI now. That's good in some ways, bad in others.

[Renate]

Back in the original days of keyboard synthesizers, a company called Pratt-Reed...

Cue the "Twilight Zone" music!

I bought one once, customized with screw studs welded onto the bottom of the keys.
I bought a gazillion little magnets and Hall effect switches.
Never did anything with them.

I do own about 3 (small) MIDI keyboards now though.

[MarkMLl]

An absolute boon to those of us who toyed with homebrew synths back in the day.

"Back in the day", as you put it, people were still wondering whether a 1MHz 6800 was going to be fast enough to scan a single manual...

And as someone else noted, everything is MIDI now. That's good in some ways, bad in others.

If somebody had noted that he'd have been wrong. Everything is USB now, which is even more difficult to break into.

MarkMLl

[Bassman59]

Fatar in Italy has long been the biggest supplier of musical-instrument keyboard mechanisms.

[IDEngineer]

If somebody had noted that he'd have been wrong. Everything is USB now, which is even more difficult to break into.

Yeah, I mispoke. I meant that everything is serialized now (on whatever hardware/protocol) rather than direct access like "in the good old days". Used to be you could sense velocity, pressure, etc. yourself....

[Renate]

Everything is USB now, which is even more difficult to break into.

Ok, to do your own thing in USB takes a bit of details and stuff, but it's well worth it.
Make your own custom USB HID device and you have sensors, keyboards, outputs, anything at your fingertips.

[MarkMLl]

Ok, to do your own thing in USB takes a bit of details and stuff, but it's well worth it.
Make your own custom USB HID device and you have sensors, keyboards, outputs, anything at your fingertips.

But he isn't talking about making an HID peripheral, he's talking about a host (i.e. analogous to a PC or Raspberry Pi) which is another thing entirely. At least if you have MIDI it's a simple case of using a UART to handle the data stream, and that's actually quite a useful access point since velocity calculations etc. have been done for you.

I've got an M-Audio keyboard here which had been played in a pub. When I opened it I removed 76p of (mostly) copper-covered coins... you can imagine what those have done to the electronics :-)

MarkMLl


MarkMLl

[ozcar]

"Back in the day", as you put it, people were still wondering whether a 1MHz 6800 was going to be fast enough to scan a single manual...

My 6800 scan code:

Code: [Select]

SCAN EQU *

  CLR BKN BASE KEY NUMBER FOR BYTE
  CLR BYTNO
  LDX #STATUS
SCAN10 LDAA BYTNO  3
 STAA DATA0B SET LS154  5
 NOP ALLOW DUST TO SETTLE  2
 NOP  2
 LDAA DATA0A READ KEY DATA  4
 STAA CURENT  4

*   P=PREV, Q=PREV-1, C=CURRENT,   ^=EOR,   .=AND
*
*   ACTION REQD=A = (C^Q).(Q^P))
*           NEW Q = P^((C^P).(Q^P))
*           NEW P = C
*
*   Q P C   A  newQ P
*   0 0 0   0     0 0  KEY DOWN, WAS DOWN
*   0 0 1   0     0 1  KEY UP, WAS DOWN
*   0 1 0   0     0 0  KEY DOWN, WAS GOING UP   - FORGET IT
*   0 1 1   1     1 1  KEY UP, WAS GOING UP     - ACTION KEY UP
*   1 0 0   1     0 0  KEY DOWN, WAS GOING DOWN - ACTION KEY DOWN
*   1 0 1   0     1 1  KEY UP, WAS GOING DOWN   - FORGET IT
*   1 1 0   0     1 0  KEY DOWN, WAS UP
*   1 1 1   0     1 1  KEY UP, WAS UP
*

 LDAB 0,X Q  5
 EORB 16,X Q^P  5
 STAB TEMP1  4
 TAB C  2
 EORB 0,X C^Q  5
 ANDB TEMP1 (C^Q).(Q^P) 3
 STAB ACTION  4

 EORA 16,X C^P  5
 ANDA TEMP1 (C^P).(Q^P)  3
 EORA 16,X P^((C^P).(Q^P))  5
 STAA 0,X NEW Q  6
 LDAA CURENT  3
 STAA 16,X NEW P  6
 STX WKST SAVE STATUS POINTER

 LDAA ACTION  3
 BEQ SCAN90 NO ACTION REQD FOR 8 KEYS  4

 LDAB BKN STARTING KEY NUMBER FOR THIS BYTE

 TSTA ACTION
SCAN70 BPL SCAN80 NOT THIS KEY
 BSR DOIT KEY UP/DOWN
SCAN80 INCB NEXT KEY NUMBER
 ASL CURENT
 ASL ACTION
 BNE SCAN70

SCAN90 EQU *

 LDAA BKN  3
 ADDA #8  2
 STAA BKN BASE KEY NUMBER +=8  4
 INC BYTNO NEXT LS154 LINE  6
 LDX WKST RESTORE STATUS POINTER
 INX NEXT IN STATUS  4
 CPX #STATEN  3
 BNE SCAN10 REPEAT FOR ALL BYTES  4


[Renate]

Ok, to do your own thing in USB takes a bit of details and stuff, but it's well worth it.

But he isn't talking about making an HID peripheral, he's talking about a host

Huh? Dealing with USB on the host side is even easier.

[NiHaoMike]

You could put a piezo on each key to detect the speed.

[MarkMLl]

Huh? Dealing with USB on the host side is even easier.

Not if the host is something like a ZYNQ, which I'd remind you is what he was talking about.

MarkMLl

[tooki]

What I find cool are the sensing systems used in hybrid digital pianos (where a full piano hammer action is present, just without strings). They use zero-contact optical sensing to sense both the key and the hammer. In Yamaha’s, they use fiber optics into the mechanism (so as to minimize the modification to the hardware), and use grayscale films to allow fine sensing. Quite impressive when you think it has 88 keys and each one has multiple signals to be sensed and processed in real-time!

[Renate]

Not if the host is something like a ZYNQ

Oh.
So if it's a Zynq isn't that easy because it's a whole SOC?
Wouldn't you want it to be a USB MIDI peripheral anyway?

[MarkMLl]

Not if the host is something like a ZYNQ

Oh.
So if it's a Zynq isn't that easy because it's a whole SOC?
Wouldn't you want it to be a USB MIDI peripheral anyway?

When OP mentioned Zynq I assumed that he was interested in building an instrument i.e. something that reads a keyboard and generates sound by some undefined procedure delegated to the FPGA section. Now I know that Zynq can run Linux, but I don't know whether it has USB host support... in any event it would be much more efficient to simply have a UART receiving MIDI.

I agree that if he builds an instrument it could really benefit from being able to act as a MIDI peripheral (or ideally, as splitable keyboard and sound generator). But implementing a USB slave/peripheral is trivial compared with implementing a host: if something like a Teensy or an STM32 ("Blue Pill") can do it I'd expect a Zynq to have no problems.

MarkMLl

[NiHaoMike]

A FPGA just for MIDI encoding is a bit overkill. But it will work nicely for building a really elaborate low latency synth.

[MarkMLl]

But it will work nicely for building a really elaborate low latency synth.

Precisely. And the job is made somewhat easier if it is getting a stream of MIDI events, rather than having to work out velocities etc. itself. But having USB in that loop would be a right PITA.

MarkMLl

[Renate]

I built a function generator out of an Analog Devices AD9850 DDS module.
It runs as a USB peripheral, the main interface being a custom HID to a desktop application.
It also has a USB MIDI interface, including portamento with a logarithmic sweep.

[ali_asadzadeh]

Guys thanks for suggestions, Actually I think if I can find the MIDI keyboards, it would be nice too, do you know some Chinese manufacturers? or any other source, I want to build a DIY synth with the help of a ZYNQ, and I think it can do quite a good job

[MarkMLl]

Guys thanks for suggestions, Actually I think if I can find the MIDI keyboards, it would be nice too, do you know some Chinese manufacturers? or any other source, I want to build a DIY synth with the help of a ZYNQ, and I think it can do quite a good job

It's difficult to sort the Chinese wheat from the Chinese chaff, in particular you're likely to find something sold as a keyboard but actually being a low-end piano/organ/synth with no easy way to break in.

I'd suggest, certainly initially, building what's popularly known as a "MIDI sound generator" or "rack-mounted synth" and using a keyboard from e.g. M-Audio.

In actual fact that would probably be a viable product if the price could be kept down: there's still quite a demand for classic sound generators and I certainly find them useful for annunciator "jingles".

I notice that there's a new product called Zynthian, which starts at 80€ (supply your own RPi, case etc.) or 285€ as a fancy kit (which is at the high-end of the selling price for a second-hand Roland or Yamaha). Alternatively there's a new entry-level MIDI generator from China for about £54... I've just ordered one of those to see if it scratches my particular itch, which is providing MIDI capability to a host running multiple guest OSes.

MarkMLl

[ali_asadzadeh]

I'd suggest, certainly initially, building what's popularly known as a "MIDI sound generator" or "rack-mounted synth" and using a keyboard from e.g. M-Audio.

Do they sell bare bone keyboards, just the mechanical part or the keyboard with a simple board just generating MIDI?

[BravoV]

Why its so hard finding what you want in Canada ?