In the name of scientific research my RG-3 was opened up and dissected. If you've always wondered what the inside of a DP looks like then look no further, all the guts and innards are hereby revealed. click on the thumbs for a bigger image.

Heres my digigrand in its full japanese handcrafted polished shinyness from Roland Hamamatsu, Japan.


We first remove the lid and top "soundboard", and behold, we see lots of insulation like what they put in walls and lofts. I assume this is to absorb vibrations, any excess noise and sound reflections. On the top section silver box thing is the amp and power unit, there are two tweets on the top and the woofers on the bottom soundboard.
See that motherboard on the bottom? Thats the guts of the DP and it's tiny, about the size of a DVD case! This motherboard is the same as what powers your HP-207s, RG-1/3/7s, its where all the sound samples and stuff is stored and processed.



A closer examination of the tweeter and woofer. They are made of paper, not the fancy kevlar or aluminium cones as in top end hifi speakers. The wiring is extremely tidy and well done. As for the quality of the case, its made of laminated wood bent around a mould as in acoustics. Beautifully made and finished. The internal cabinetry is also very clean, there is no roughness or sloppiness of workmanship anywhere.



We are now going to strip the front end of the machine. The keyboard is revealed and it turns out the piano has a silver lining:). Amps, power components and connectors for audio jacks etc are on the bottom half, and the tiny motherboard is on the top. In typical japanese fashion it's all very cleanly laid out and very tidy.

Most interesting is the PHAII keyboard action. The grading of the hammers is quite subtle and you have to look carefully to see the size differences. The escapement action is actually a little rubber "finger" that licks past a lever to give the escapement style click.

I'm looking at my piano case and I'm suprised how few electronics there are in there. The components are super compact, all mounted on a couple of circuit boards. I was expecting my digigrand to be bursting to the seams with electronics and complicated looking stuff that would make nikola tesla proud. Even my desktop PC looks more complicated on the inside. Damn those japanese for minaturisation and neatness.



the keyboard is stripped bare and I'm left with a rather sad looking shell of a piano. Poor RG-3, I hope I never have to do this to her again.



thanks for reading

Wow, this is great to see! Thanks for being adventurous.

Great post!

Were you able to put it all back together again without any parts left over?

Cheers,
James
x

This post and its pictures was well worth reading!
Thanks a lot for sharing!