My Kawai ES920 has a key that stopped producing sound. It started intermittently but now it won't sound at all. My warranty is void (not valid) because I bought it on the bay directly from Japan (with a big discount of course) and apparently the warranty is void when we do that.
Another problem is that I got into a fight with my local Kawai dealer last year so I can't ask for his help now.
I called the other local shops and there's a Roland dealer who has a tech who is willing to have a go at fixing my instrument .
However the only thing he can do is to clean the areas where the sensors sense the other parts. This has been known to correct that problem in some cases, but I not sure about the success rate.
So, if you know about Kawai DP 's, do you think this has a good chance to work?
If it doesn't work I would have to bring it to another Kawai dealer , which would be a 6 hour drive from my place.

    I would ask a friend for a huge favour, which is to take your ES920 to your local dealer, tell them that they bought the ES920 second hand and that a key stopped producing sound. Your local dealer repairs the key, and you'll owe your friend big time!

    *
    ... feeling like the pianist on the Titanic ...

      Rubens Given your keyboard has a serial number, any Kawai dealer will know instantly that your piano is what's known as "grey market", not sold in the country your in, and will not be covered under warranty. My advice would be, to approach your local Kawai dealer, hat in hand, and have them fix it, because they know how to fix it. Yes, you will have to pay for the work. But the repair will be warranted and you will have your piano back. Lesson learned.

          @Rubens,

          A single key malfunctioning, and eventually stopping entirely, is definitely a sign that you have something going on with the rubber dome cap--either grease/dust that is blocking the contact, a worn out conductive pad on the sensor, or more seriously, something wrong with the contact on the circuit-board side.

          Cleaning the contacts is a very good first step approach, and ANY knowledgeable or beginner DP tech should be able to do this. In fact, you could easily do this yourself if you don't mind going through the hassle of disassembling the DP (maybe you don't want to bother with that, which is fine).

          Also, Kawai US is very good about sending replacement parts and service manuals (they sent me the service manual for the MP-11 and the NV-10 when I emailed to ask, no charge). They'll give you a price list and directly sell you replacement rubber cap strips so long as they have them in stock, too.

          So if you're looking to save as much money as possible, I'd say definitely try to clean the contact area around the dome cap for the busted key and see if that works. If you want to avoid possibly needing to open the piano up again multiple times if that doesn't fix the problem, just get a complete set of dome cap strips from Kawai, and change the whole set out for all 88 keys.

            Gombessa
            Thanks for your advice.
            I'm not comfortable doing any DIY repair on my DP. I just figured if a tech agrees to just clean up the contacts for 75$ then it's not too big of a gamble. Let's say you couldn't do it yourself for whatever reason, and the only tech nearby offered that option, would you go with that? Thanks again for your help.

                Rubens Let's say you couldn't do it yourself for whatever reason, and the only tech nearby offered that option, would you go with that?

                Yeah, this is probably one of the most common issues with any DP, and aside from the AvantGrand and Novus hybrids, every DP works the same way. It should be very easy to do for any tech, and I'd say probably 75%+ chance it'll fix the problem, at least in the short term. For $75, that's well worth the time it'll take for them to disassemble, clean, and reassemble the DP.

                Assuming a replacement rubber contact strip is $15-20, you might consider ordering the segment for the broken key from Kawai, and giving it to the tech so that if cleaning doesn't work, he can take 30 seconds to replace the strip with the new one and see if that solves the problem while the piano is already open.

                If that doesn't fix the problem, your next step is probably PCB replacement (the yellow/green circuitboard under the blue rubber cap in the above picture) and that'll be a bit of added cost/complexity.

                  21 days later

                  Update: I REPAIRED IT!!!

                  @Gombessa It WAS the blue part! Thank you so much for your help!
                  I looked for replacement parts on the Kawai website, didn't find any, then my sweetheart suggested to search elsewhere online (smart girl!), I found the part on ebay for 20$, ordered it immediately while thinking to myself "this ain't gonna work, no chance". And then the part arrived, which gave me the courage to disassemble my DP. I extracted the blue part that encompassed the silent note, and sure enough, that part was broken ! So I replaced it with the new part, and tried: good as new!

                  PianoMonk Lesson learned.

                  Yes! Lesson learned to trust my instincts, and great forum members such as Gombessa, and smart people in my life such as my sweetheart! Lesson learned indeed! Thank you!

                      Rubens Congratulations on your successful repair!
                      Together with the invaluable assistance from @Gombessa, this is a perfect example of communuity collaboration, thanks to Piano Tell 👍

                        Sometimes the dreading of all those screws can be daunting. I procrastinated about that with my Casio. To be honest, it wasn't terrible. I think the hardest part of it was making sure I had a tool that would hang on to the screw so that it didn't fall into the inside while reassembling and require that I take it apart again to retrieve the screw. That, and making sure not to overtighten screws. After all, it's plastic, and anything beyond barely snug risks breaking the plastic. A couple of non-critical screws already had broken parts attached to them and I didn't bother about those.

                        If anything, it's tedious. Might take you 20 minutes to get to whatever it is that you need to spend 1 minute working on the actual problem. Definitely not rocket science. I'd guess those who do it all the time probably get a lot faster at it.

                        Rubens then my sweetheart suggested to search elsewhere online (smart girl!), I found the part on ebay for 20$, ordered it immediately while thinking to myself "this ain't gonna work, no chance". And then the part arrived, which gave me the courage to disassemble my DP. I extracted the blue part that encompassed the silent note, and sure enough, that part was broken ! So I replaced it with the new part, and tried: good as new!

                        Wow! I'm so happy to hear you were able to fix it, AND that it wasn't a horrible ordeal to DIY. Your SO is smart, I never even thought to check ebay, but it's absolutely the right place for esoteric parts like this.

                        I just KNEW if you wanted to, you'd have zero problems at all. Your manner here shows you're savvy, thoughtful, and resourceful (like the plank for the laptop rest across your Baldwin) and this kind of DP repair would be child's play for you.

                        High five! 🙌, glad to hear you're back in business.

                          What a brilliant result, well done! This thread is an eye opener, it's great to learn that faulty DPs are sometimes fixable by amateurs, given a bit of patience.

                          "Don't let's ask for the moon, we have the stars." (Final line from Now,Voyager, 1942)