Hi, new to the forum and looking for help. I have the above mentioned DP which has developed a problem with the sustain (damper) pedal. It doesn't trigger the damper basically. I know the electronics work as I have unplugged and replugged the pedals and have had permanent sustain. It just seems that he pedal is not switching it. Has anyone else had this problem? I have heard that the potentiometer has around 180 degree of travel but only around a 20 degree sweet spot. Has anyone replaced this pot with a more suitable component?

njc235, I don't have the RP800 but do have the PRP800. The Roland DP-10 pedal works well with the PRP. If all else fails, could you rig something using the components from a Roland half-damper pedal?

I have disassembled the pedal unit and tested the pot, that's all working fine varying the impedance between 20k and 0 ohms at pin 1 on the pedal plug up at the DP end. Now i don't knw what to do as the trail vanishes into the main circuit board on or around pin 5 of IC20.

The piano must be feeding the 20K pot with a constant voltage. Is it doing that? Could be the referance voltage from the piano is not working. And do you get a varying voltage at pin 5?

Hi Chris, I will check that one tomorrow.

Now this is getting weird! I tested the voltage at pin 5 of IC20 and it is 4.95V. When the sustain pedal is pressed it drops to 4.82V - clearly not enough to trigger the input. I tried shorting pins 1 and 5 on the pedal plug to force pin 5 of IC 20 to chassis GND (0V) unfortunately this did not produce sustain either. Now i'm confused. There must be a way to simulate sustain trigger on the PCB or via a key combination on the control panels. Any GEM engineers out there?

One way to test the sustain function would be to send a midi message on cc#64 to see if it can be triggered at all.

Depending on the result, I would also check to see if turning damper physical modeling off makes a difference (F14).

The F14 function does indeed change the sustain sound. I have also found that sometimes when i replug the pedals in the sustain is permanently o. I will check out the midi idea later when I can find a laptop.

Right, after much searching I have finally managed to test this. With a midi keyboard and pedal connected to the RP800 the sustain does work. This of course does not rule out an expensive repair! The function of the expression pedal works but the electronics, at least on the non-midi side, do not.

I suspect the cheapest solution may be to find and use a midi pedal in place of the original.

Hi voxpops. As the DP-10 works well with the PRP-700/800, assuming the RPU-3 is basically 3 DP-10s in one unit (all three pedals on it ARE dynamic), would the RPU-3 also potentially work with my PRP-700? Also, bearing in mind that the PRP has one TRS socket and two TS sockets, would the left and centre pedals just work as basic switches?

Triquetra,

I would assume so, but please don't take that as gospel. Since I no longer own the GEM, I have no way of testing that. If you're thinking of getting the RPU-3, I would order from a store with a good return policy, so you can send it back if it doesn't function correctly.

Thanks for that. Shouldn't have any trouble returning though, more worried about potential damage to pedal or piano. Is that likely at all do you think, what with the RPU-3 being a fairly new model?