I see our favourite eBay seller appears to now be selling his products from a new eBay account with only 2 feedback and with the items listed as being in Douglas (Isle of Man) instead of Bristol UK.

Hello All,

I have been working to repair the LCD on my JD-990. Looks like I need a new ribbon cable between the screen and the main board but am having trouble locating the proper cable. Any idea what this cable is? The one in here is a 14 pin flat cable, but I've tried searching for E66065 AWM 20624 80C 60V VW-1 14 pin and not having any luck. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

search for "FFC"
the importants things to know are
- the number of contacts: 14
- the pitch: xxmm perhaps 1.27mm?
- the total lenght
- If the contact are on the same/opposite side

you can check here and change language, perhaps they have the right one
https://fr.farnell.com/c/cables-fils...4conducteur-s-

if not make a search on the net

Hey all, my JD has been in storage for a while. Plugged it in to find my screen has died, no backlight just a horizontal black line across the middle of it. I had found a thread with the exact same problem but can’t find it now for some reason, could anyone help pinpoint the issue? I remember in said thread someone suggested power supply failure, don’t know if this helps. Many thanks in advance.

Swap a new internal battery (CR2032), turn it on again. Could be that the line appears again. Turn off/on again. Worked for me.

Thanks for that, much appreciated. Will try it.

+1 here


ps :
any news about some other "way"
to get the display replacement at an honest cost ?

Unfortunately no. The eBay guy's a highway robber :(

He is also by far the most unpleasant man I have ever dealt with on eBay.

I’m glad others have mentioned this despite people saying otherwise.

I notice he has changed his eBay account due to the various very negative feedback he was receiving. He is also plying his extremely overpriced wares on Reverb and other places.

His MO is that he sends the display to you well packed and ok. If you even have a simple question about installation or issues, he instantly turns into a super aggressive and patronising, even ridiculously childish... person. I mean crazy, crazy bad!

I installed one of these displays into my JD-990. It worked for about a week but it fried something on the motherboard and I was unable to even use the JD-990 anymore.

I asked him for help and advice and he just ripped into me. I’m another stupid idiot. I don’t have a clue what I’m talking about. He knows everything. How dare I question his superiority. He’s sick of dealing with us idiots... e.t.c.

I ended up having to buy a new unit and used the old one for parts.

This was really upsetting as I’d had the JD-990 for many years and it meant a lot to me.

I made a complaint to eBay (with screenshots of his abuse) and gave negative feedback but he somehow managed to get the feedback removed as I noticed he has done with virtually every negative review he gets.

I’m absolutely certain he will see this post and try to cause problems. I don’t care. I just came across this thread today and noticed some posts in relation to his attitude and business practices and finally I have an outlet to warn people.

He is clearly very unbalanced. All I say is beware of this guy. Chances are you will not have a problem, but if you do.. God help you!

Wow my experiences with the guy (this is the guy based on the Isle of Man, right?) were 180 degrees the other direction.

He was very pleasant very helpful but very adamant about making sure I read the instructions.

After cracking open my unit (a Kawai K5000S) I realize it was more than I cared to tackle, so I put it in the shop to have the display replaced.

I emailed the guy and asked if the tech had questions could he email him and he said fine, glad to help.

Yes the unit was pricey (about $118 with shipping) but K5000 displays are like unobtanium and when you could get one they ran over $300. As it was it took Kawai US three weeks just to get back to me and say "sorry we can be of no help".

I bought my display from Reverb and the guy couldn't have been nicer and easier to deal with.

Analogeezer

Actually K5000 displays are far from unobtanium, you can easily get them from China. It's the same type of display that is used on Kurzweil K2xxx series (and also PC3), Wavestation, and some other units too...

I got mine (white on black background) for like 3x less than what you paid.

Yup - see this other GS thread

Hi blinduncledallas. What is your JD990 problem?

Okay, great pep talk before I get to this right now after receiving my display.

Is this a new solution, or the same one thats currently out there?

https://ebay.us/iwCIUy

thanks,
RDP

AFAIK it's a new solution.

It ain't THAT much cheaper than the other one... and blue only, I want a white on black one on the cheap. T_T

Appears to be a new player.

However, a second seller from the UK is a little suspicious as the other one has past form for starting 'new' ebay accounts under a different identity and other kinds of shenanigans. I double checked the 'Lux Displays LTD' filing with UK Companies House and the CEO name is different from the name used in this new auction.

So I'm fairly sure this is a new legit seller -- the alternative is that someone is making one hell of an effort to sell some pricey displays to a small number of synth enthusiasts. Occam's razor and all that.

Worth noting the new display is STN, while the more expensive one is FFSTN. What's the difference? FFSTN has two compensation films which greatly increases the contrast and is more expensive to make (however they look VERY sharp and the filtering virtually eliminates any backlight bleeding that you see with cheaper displays). Also the natural colour for a negative STN display is that characteristic blue with white lettering so these can be bought a lot cheaper versus a custom LCD and backlight combo.

We already know that the original JD-990 display does not have an onboard controller and any replacement display will have to either bypass the controller or be custom made from scratch to not include one. The new display could be either of these. Either he modifies them himself (which takes time, so could easily make a $10 display cost $50 or more) or has them custom made (like the FFSTN seller) -- both of which could account for the price he's charging.

Here's a side-by-side of an FSTN (left, single film) versus an FFSTN (right, double), to give you an idea how much of a difference those compensation films make with regards to contrast and backlight bleed. The STN has no films so the difference is even more dramatic:




It'll be interesting to see what his solution is. I'm tempted to take the plunge.


edit: Checked out some of this guys other offerings. Very interesting and slick stuff -- he's come up with a daughterboard for the MPC2000/2000XL that let you mirror the internal screen on a larger monitor. That's damn cool. I wonder if that can be applied to other displays or if it's something unique about the MPC?

.... hmmmmm not so bad...

but price still not good !!!

For the Genesis confirmed ROHM RCM6027 mod, can anyone explain what the process actually is? I understand a resistor might be needed on the main board, but is there anything else, at all? Sorry, I'm a little confused over the required steps if you take this route.

thanks,
RDP

Any sort of alternative to the guy on ebay yet? I just realized that the contrast on my screen is quite poor, can be hard to read. Hoping someone has found a cheaper solution.

I wonder if that's JazzCat? I've been following their FB page for a long time and they've recently started putting out a lot of custom designs for Akai stuff including displays.

Has anyone tried the new seller's products yet? They seems to be constantly a bit cheaper than the other seller. I'm thinking of taking the plunge.

RDP

Hi all,

As owner of a JD-990 with a tired display... I try to find a cheap solution to help my dear JD...
I found this, and I be ready to order a sample :

https://www.alibaba.com/product-deta...196312abeDsW8P

Somebody already tried this product ?

Thanks.
Y.

I wouldn't use this product. They don't list the operating voltage -- should be 3.3V or 5V and some displays have a transformer or a cheap buck converter onboard to do the conversion. The next issue is interface -- a display with header pins will be the easiest to work with (and you can easily attach temporary dupont cables or jumpers to test conections). This display has what looks like a connector for a flat cable, so you'll have to do a lot more work on very small pins to adapt it.

Part of the reason why the two sellers on ebay charge so much for the display is that they either extensively modify them -- most displays these days have an onboard controller and that will have to be bypassed (the JD-990 has the controller as part of it's mainboard), or they get a custom display made that has all the connections they need and omits the controller (which is not cheap for small quantities, so they buy in bulk and now have an investment to recoup). I do suspect that the changes you need to make to a standard display aren't all that difficult or magical. We could probably get people together to do a group buy of custom displays but would we be able to get enough to make the cost worthwhile? With some effort I think we could round up a couple hundred people but at the end of the day it's probably just better in the long run to bite the bullet and pay for a display that you know is not doing to fade or burn out in your lifetime. When JD-990s were $300 then a $200 display made no sense. Last I looked 990s are topping $1500-2000 so a $200 expense to keep the synth going isn't as big a leap -- and when you consider that people are willing to pay that amount or more to buy the Vintage Synth expansion...

5x better?! haha

I am enjoying your 1080 soundset I just bought. Already wanna buy the 990 soundset soon. But, if your new/unreleased one is 5x better, now I'm unsure if I wanna buy it just yet, lol.