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Hi everyone,

The search bar tells me this has come up several times over the years, and it's clearly a common issue with digital keyboards, but I haven't found great follow-up or great answers to any of these posts.

My Yamaha DGX660 has developed a nasty clickity-clacking sound. This is NOT caused by worn felts or any issue with stoppers or hammers - it happens even with the slightest touch of the keys, without depressing them at all, as you can see in the video. This happens with most keys but not all, and only with white keys. Rarely-used notes at the extreme ends of the keyboard are fine. In the video you can see that the clicking sound is also associated with some wiggling as well, as if the key cover (the main white body of the key) is loose somewhat. The piano hasn't been dropped, hasn't been moved since before this issue started, no spills, no obstructions, etc. Clearly an issue of wear and tear.

My entirely non-expert guess, based on the nature of the issue, is that the top key bodies have come loose somehow. If someone who knows more can tell me that it's likely a matter of some disassembly and gluing, for example, I'm confident that I'm handy and careful enough to pull it off. If it comes to this, I'm willing to take the risk with voiding warranty, as I'm sure a repair of 60+ keys will easily approach the cost of the whole piano.

I've contacted Yamaha about actual warranty repair, but I'm covering all my bases here in case that doesn't pan out. I'm within the time frame, but not sure if this counts as a 'defect' or otherwise is something they cover.

Thanks,

SP

My advice is to apply the warranty and replace it with another, normally that sound is produced in yamahas with ghs due to the wear of the years on the keys, since your keyboard is new, it may have to be something from the factory. Lucky

It's not quite new, but I'm still well within what *appears* to be a 3-year (limited) warranty, according to the Yamaha info for this model - so we'll see what they say. I have a feeling however that it won't be as easy as taking it to an approved shop and having them pay for the repair. Fingers crossed. But yeah, I'm thinking that will be the only solution, unless someone chimes in with a fairly confident guess/experience that it's something fixable by an amateur.

I had that in my old Casio and I have a little bit of that in my current Kawai, both with plastic keys.

I'd say it's just some slack in the mechanism caused by wear.

If nothing is broken, then there's nothing to glue.

Many plastic actions use a synthetic grease for lubrication, but it also helps dampen the irritating sound of lightweight plastic moving parts. It has possibly migrated. YMMV

Yes, I was going to suggest it is a lubrication problem. I completely restored a MOX8, which uses also GHS, and the amount of grease used is really large. That is OK while grease is stable but heat can soften it and will slowly migrate by gravity.

In your case it seems a bit extreme. It could be a fault on manufacturing, applying too little grease to start. So, yes, try to use your warranty on that. Is a pain to correctly add grease to all 88 keys. And you should use proper one... Which is very expensive.

This makes much more sense than nearly every white key somehow "breaking", with me never noticing the moment of damage over 60+ occurrences, yet also still working perfectly well otherwise. The keyboard is on the top floor of my house and it regularly gets very warm up here all year, so the grease melt/migration issue could very well have happened.

The only other thing I can think of is if there are screws/pins holding the action to the key, and these got loose and need to be punched. I'll cross that bridge after I've ruled out grease.

Thanks a lot for the tip. I'm definitely going to pursue the warranty, but if that falls through, grease application is something I could work through. I'll just videotape the entire disassembly and keep close track of the pieces.

Some of these actions can be noisy. I've had 3 DGXs and all were similar; didn't take too long, either before her next door (watching the tele) became aware of such, even with me utilising headphones.
Now, they are fine machines but for that. If you get it exchanged I'd imagine the same thing might happen.
20 years ago, I had a neighbour complaining of this on a CLP250 I had. Strange clunky sounds coming from the loft, she thought. At 3am!
I had toothache at the time, and found playing the piano was an excellent way to get over it.

Definitely use a high temperature stable grease, because even if it stays in place, the oil can dissolution and turn the area into a glue like paste.

I recommend silicone gel lube. Like shin etsu for honda cars, but that stuff is expensive, look for knockoffs which work just as well.