Akai LPK25 - Fixing a broken USB socket
Reviving an old post from the dead:
https://web.archive.org/web/20141026171931/http://www.jaredqpittman.com/akai-lpk25-fixing-a-broken-usb-socket/
This had been helpful to some folks a long time ago, here it is again in case it may help anyone who comes across this old, but still useful mini-midi keyboard.
# Have an Akai LPK25 with a broken USB socket?
Of course you do. We all do.
Hopefully some of the photos here will help you get it up and running again. Please note that all of this is at your own risk, and I assume no liability for a permanently junked keyboard. Proceed with caution!
That being said… to fix your broken LPK25 you’re going to need a few things:
A soldering iron (and a pretty freaking good one, with a very small tip. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT)
Solder. duh.
Some very fine gauge wire
An old USB cable that you no longer need
A multimeter (for checking the pin/cable color on your USB cable)
LPK25FixA.png - Still need to find the old images, will get to that..
I’ve laid out which points on the board you are going to need to solder your new connections to. Note the position of the removed USB socket.
I found that it was easier to try to solder individual wires onto the board, and then connect these to the stripped USB cable instead of trying to directly solder the USB cable itself.
Here’s another (worse) pic from a different angle. The color of the wires that I’m using have no correlation to those of the USB Cable’s, and the colors in your cable are probably different than mine anyways. The best way to test which pin corresponds with which color is for you cable is to splice the cable open and check each pin with a multimeter.
LPK25FixB.png
Once you’ve got your connections made, plug it in and test before closing the case up. Consider plugging in to an external hub that you don’t care about as well, just in case you didn’t get the right wire configuration. (another good reason for not directly soldering the USB cable).
Make sure that you wrap your cable around a few of the posts inside of the case. Otherwise you’ll run the risk of ruining all of your hard work when someone pulls too hard on the cord. You can widen the security slot on the side of the keyboard to make room for the cable to get out.
LPK25FixC.png
That’s it! Hopefully you’re able to get your LPK25 up and running again as I was. If you have any questions or suggestions feel free to comment below. I know there may be some confusion as to which way the USB pins are oriented, and I plan on updating the guide here soon to make this easier to understand. I wrote this post in a bit of a hurry so it’s a little sloppy, but for now it should get you on your way.
Good luck!
# — UPDATE —
Here is a picture that illustrates a little bit better which USB wires correspond to what points on the LPK25′s mainboard (If you are using a standard USB cable the colors should correspond). I still highly suggest using a finer gauge “breakout” wire to solder to the board first, which you can then connect your usb cable to, as most usb cables have a thicker guage braided copper wire inside, which is much harder to work with when doing precise soldering such as this. Also, if you end up mismatching wires, it’s a lot less work to simply re-twist a wire onto the breakout, than to de/re-solder a new joint.
# Ye-old comments
Lazily pasted from the archive.org copy:
David
September 14, 2013 at 5:56 pm · Reply
Okay, so I really don’t know how to do this but I need to – I can’t afford to buy a new one of these and it just broke barely outside of warranty.
Do you have any other, clearer photographs? Thank you! This site is the only thing on the internet that seeks to address this seriously problem…
Let’s assume I have no multimeter, but will try my best to get some solder and a soldering iron. Which USB wires correspond to the ones in your photo? It would be a huge help, b/c I am just not that handy…
Thanks!
d
Jared Pittman
September 15, 2013 at 1:44 pm · Reply
Hey David,
I’ll try to get up some higher quality photos here in the next few days.
In the meantime, definitely try to find a very good soldering iron with as fine of a tip as you can get on it. The joints that you have to make are super small/precise and it’s really easy to accidentally solder where you don’t want to with a larger one.
Check back in a few days and I should have something up.
David
September 19, 2013 at 2:34 pm · Reply
Sweet! Looks great, thank you. I’m going to try to borrow a nice soldering iron soon – I’ll let you know how it goes! I might just buy one, since a new soldering iron is cheaper than a new LPK or anything similar…
David
September 19, 2013 at 2:36 pm · Reply
Also, its ok for me to just rip the old USB socket out? Is there a special way you’d recommend doing this?
Jared Pittman
September 19, 2013 at 4:48 pm · Reply
I would suggest using the soldering iron to help remove it. If it’s your first time soldering do a test run on some spare wires or something similar before you start out on the LPK to get some practice in.
Also, instructables has a pretty good tutorial on basic soldering if you need to read up on technique before you give it a go (http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-solder/). Good luck!
Ollie Gray
September 29, 2013 at 7:09 am · Reply
will this work for the akai Lpd8 drum pad controller?
Jared Pittman
September 29, 2013 at 11:23 am · Reply
No idea =/
If you can open it up and trace which pin goes to which component on the board, the process of soldering on a new cable to those points would be the same as the LPK. You could do this either by visually following the lines on the board, or by using a multimeter to check for continuity from one point to another.
Ludwig Treyer
February 7, 2014 at 11:23 am · Reply
Very fine! it helps very good. thx lupo
Michael Ames
February 20, 2014 at 4:45 pm · Reply
How did you diagnose the problem in the first place? My LPK 25 works intermittently. When it doesn’t work, the problem is that Windows/OSX doesn’t recognize the USB device. It knows one is there, but says it’s malfunctioning. Is that symptomatic of a USB problem?
Jared Pittman
February 21, 2014 at 2:17 am · Reply
It was pretty easy for me to tell when mine was broken, because the entire metal portion of the USB port fell out completely. What you’re experiencing sounds like it could possibly be an issue with power coming from the computer’s USB port. Maybe try hooking up to a couple different computers, or to a powered USB hub see if your problem persists in different scenarios. If it does, it could be a loose connection on the port then.
Claude
April 1, 2014 at 6:19 am · Reply
Thanks dude !!!
Mine was broken, the mini usb port just detached itself from the board so i searched the net for some info on how to fix this….
Worked liked a charm…The trickiest part was soldering the data wires so that they dont touch each other.
Thanks again.
Jared Pittman
April 1, 2014 at 7:34 am · Reply
Nice! Glad to hear it worked!
Lukas
July 8, 2014 at 6:39 pm · Reply
Thank you so much, that was very helpful, my usb connector fell off as well, unfortunately just after i soldered the cable on and it worked some cable went off again and i had to do it again.
However now it doesnt work anymore; I fear I might have damaged some of the components, as I did check all the connections and they work. The device only blinks once when i connect it and afterwards goes dead. Has anybody any idea how I can check the components or troubleshoot ?
Greetings from Germany ….