Korg Forums

Hi. I have a problem with the screen of my Korg Krome 61. Some months ago someone broke into my home and threw my keyboard to the swimming pool. I found it a few days later, let it dry for a couple of months and turned it back on. It worked perfectly, except for the screen which flickered and had inverted colors. I kept using it, because it looked ugly but worked as expected. It had no other issue whatsoever.

A few days after that, the screen started working better. It started displaying correct colors every now and then, and the flickering was much less noticeable too. Now, a couple of weeks after that, despite working with almost no flaws for several days, the screen suddenly started going blank sometimes. The backlight still works, but the screen turns into a light grey tone, showing remnants of the last image it showed correctly. For example, let's say I'm in SEQ mode and the screen fails, it turns light grey, but not a uniform light grey, it has like a ghost of the last image in SEQ mode. It stays like that until I reboot.

It happens randomly, but most of the times it happens during boot up. If it boots correctly and doesn't crash right after showing the auto power-off message, it will probably work OK for several minutes, maybe even an hour or more.

I was thinking of buying a new screen and replacing it, but now I'm not sure the problem lies in the LCD unit itself, because the behaviour is uncommon. The digitizer works flawlessly too. I'm at a loss...

What do you guys think could be causing the problem?

Thank you very much!

You'll need to open the keyboard and look inside at the circuitboards/lcd etc.
It was submerged in water, could be corroding/dried lime/breaking contacts to pins/contacts/prints/ic's/cables etc.
If you're lucky you can just clean it with cleaning alcohol/printed circuit/contact cleaners.
Clean LCD flat cable/connectors and reseat could fix the bad contacts/display problem because of losing electrical contact to lcd.

bradkorg wrote:You'll need to open the keyboard and look inside at the circuitboards/lcd etc.
It was submerged in water, could be corroding/dried lime/breaking contacts to pins/contacts/prints/ic's/cables etc.
If you're lucky you can just clean it with cleaning alcohol/printed circuit/contact cleaners.
Clean LCD flat cable/connectors and reseat could fix the bad contacts/display problem because of losing electrical contact to lcd.

I already opened it up six times, cleaning cables, circuit boards, etc.. I didn't remove the two side boards yet, though, and I just used plain alcohol instead of isopropyl alcohol. I might try to do it a deeper investigation and cleansing.

It's working worse everyday. Now most of the times the screen doesn't display anything, just the backlight. I'm lucky if it displays the Krome logo for 5-10 seconds before losing image.

Thanks for the reply.

A few days in the pool is going to play havoc with any electronic device not designed for prolonged water immersion, including most devices designed for continuous outdoor use. If the keyboard was covered by an insurance policy and there is a police case number for the break in, go make a claim and get a new keyboard.

voip wrote:A few days in the pool is going to play havoc with any electronic device not designed for prolonged water immersion, including most devices designed for continuous outdoor use. If the keyboard was covered by an insurance policy and there is a police case number for the break in, go make a claim and get a new keyboard.

I tried going that way before even knowing the keyboard was inside the swimming pool (I had assumed it got stolen until I found it there), but that didn't go well. The insurance company refused my claim because the keyboard was in garage, 5 meters away from the house, which is the insured building.

Anyway, like I said in my original post, the keyboard works like a charm, the only problem is the screen. So even if I don't fix it, I can still use all the functions via USB using Krome Editor.

I recently learned that any 7-inch screen with a 50-pin connector would work, so I'd probably buy a cheap one anywhere and see if that works. If it does, I'll consider buying the original one in the future, to get the expected image quality.

It must be the screen that gone bad or the connector that it connects to..
If the one you got works there is no point changing it.There is no visible difference on most of them..!