Things break….and usually at the worst time. Case in point…..I had a gig literally 2 days before Christmas. I had a rehearsal for it 5 days before. No problem, packed up the saxophones, the flute, stands, and AE-30. Get to the rehearsal……no sound from the AE-30. Huh. Bad cable? No. It was turning on. Volume issue? Maybe? Spent a lot of the rehearsal trying to get it to work. Did not succeed. I realized I had a LOT of tunes that I was doing on EWI…..and had not written out Bb or Eb parts for…….yikes!
So, next day, troubleshooted the AE-30. Took it apart. Found the problem……there is a little tube that goes to the breath sensor. That had gotten disconnected. Easy to fix right?
NO. Seems the tube does not fit underneath the connector if the sensor is solder into it’s connector board. I spent almost TWO hours trying to get this tube over the sensor. No dice. The profanities ensued……and I spend some time reworking some of my parts to Bb and Eb and trying to figure out how to spread the parts around. I DID TRY to see if I could do them on the Akai EWI 4000s…..but decided that I am really out of practice on it, and it’s glitching potential because of me being out of practice would be detrimental to the group’s performance. So I just brought more instruments to spread around the sonic textures. It seemed to work well for the gig.
I contacted Roland, and heard back during the week between Christmas and New Years. I shipped the AE-30 to Roland to get fixed. About a week after they received it, I got an email with a quote on fixing it. It was @ $230 plus shipping and handling. I authorized it. I am now awaiting it’s return.
In the meantime, I bought a Nanuk case for putting the AE-30 and my pedalboard in. I think the AE-30’s “damage” was due to the lack of padding of the case it comes in. It’s not a bad case, but it lacks protection. And I think it got tweaked in my car somehow and got damaged.
More soon when it comes back……and perhaps pictures of the Nanuk case.