Hi everyone, long time no post! Sorry I've been a bit of a ghost around here for ... well, a long time. Certain demanding family issues mean I have very, very little time for even music at the moment (but I am still gigging, etc).
Anyway, hoping someone here can help. I am at my wit's end.
A couple years ago I bought a Kurzweil Artis 7. Thing is, I bought it used. From Guitar Center. Things were going great, until about a year into ownership, it started intermittently making this horrible digital-distortion noise, which would just come on suddenly and LOUD. The first time it happened, I was setting up my rig to play a coffee house/restaurant that has a nice listening clientele. We were using the house PA. I had set everything up, then suddenly, KSSHSHHHSHSHHSHSHSH!! Hugely loud static noise deafens everyone in the joint. We quickly start turning things down, realizing it's coming from my keyboard, but we don't know if it's the board itself or somwhere else in the signal chain. I turned off the keyboard (among other pieces of gear), and the noise did not return. The next time it happened some months later and after several uses in between, I was setting up for a gig in a LIBRARY. KSSHSHHHSHSHHSHSHSH!! Fortunately we were in a dedicated performance room, but it kinda shook me and made me wary of whether it would do it again during performance. This is when I realized, this was an intermittent problem and definitely was the Artis, not the PA since this PA was mine, completely different from the PA used at the venue we'd played at the first time the noise happened.
Months went by. At this point the keyboard is sitting in my closet till I have time to take it up to one of two authorized repair places in my area, and I'm back to using my very old Kurzweil PC2, "the purple dinosaur". [Those of you familiar with me understand that I have a neurovascular condition that makes any digital weighted keybed hurt my arm ... dunno why, but only acoustic pianos and semi-weighted keys will do, and as a jazz piano player, the best I've found is the Fatar TP-8. Both PC2 and Artis have the TP8, totally the reason I bought it ... plus I like Kurzweil products in general.] I finally take it up to one place. They have it for 3 weeks, couldn't replicate the problem. There's a diagnostic fee down the drain. Months pass. I have time to take it to a second place, and the guy who runs it is in country (he leaves a lot). He has it for 3 weeks and gets the sound to happen. Problem is, he doesn't know if it's the motherboard, some other power circuitry, or one other thing he mentioned to me. It could be a bad solder. But without a $700 motherboard lying around, he can't just swap it out to "see".
Ugh! What do I do?? This keyboard is a doorstop now ... unless someone knows about this problem and a solution for it. My PC2 is battle-scarred and has been a reliable tank. Really disappointed in this Artis, never expected a Kurzweil keyboard to do this. But I guess I took my chances buying it used, even if from GC (I think it was refurbed but for some reason, can't find this ONE receipt, out of all the receipts I have). I don't need a dummy controller, I have other boards that function standalone I can use for that. Can I sell it with the caveat that it makes this noise? Or do I have some kind of recourse I'm not aware of? You folks are the most knowledgeable group I know when it comes to gear, I figure if anyone has ideas on what to do next, it's you.
Whew, that was longer than I anticipated! If you read this far, thanks for doing so.