Aerophone AE-30 Pro- Internals

Gianluca Barbaro

It's been a few months since I got the new Aerophone AE-30 Pro wind instrument produced by Roland.

As many others have reported, the upper octave key (+1) tends to get sticky in time, which is exactly what happened to mine too, so I decided to open it up and see what could be done. (Do not try doing the same yourself unless you know what you're doing: I take no responsibility if you go ahead and break your Aerophone and/or void Roland's warranty in the process.)

Gianluca Barbaro, The Digital Blower - Roland Aerophone AE-30 Pro opened

Once removed the batteries and the 11 main screws on the back, there's still a short flat cable to be disconnected, before splitting the instrument in half. 

Gianluca Barbaro, The Digital Blower - Roland Aerophone AE-30 Pro - Flat cable

Following are a few closed up pictures of AE-30's motherboard. Here, on the left, you can see the upper stereo speakers (unfortunately their cables are soldered) and the connector to the mouthpiece. You have to disconnect all connectors before unscrewing the motherboard (octave keys are under the motherboard).

Gianluca Barbaro, The Digital Blower - Roland Aerophone AE-30 Pro - Motherboard


Here you can see another pair of connectors. Pay attention to the one in the upper-left part of the picture: it's the display connector and it requires special care when connecting/disconnecting it.

Gianluca Barbaro, The Digital Blower - Roland Aerophone AE-30 Pro - Motherboard


Another three connectors in the lower part of the motherboard.

Gianluca Barbaro, The Digital Blower - Roland Aerophone AE-30 Pro - Motherboard


Here you can see the MIDI connector board and the end of the condensation tube.

Gianluca Barbaro, The Digital Blower - Roland Aerophone AE-30 Pro - Motherboard


Once removed all connectors and unscrewed the mother board, you can have access to the parts below it.

Here is the Display board. In the upper part you can see the octave keys mechanism.

Gianluca Barbaro, The Digital Blower - Roland Aerophone AE-30 Pro - Display Board

Here are a few pictures of the other side of the mainboard. In this first one, you can see the octave switches and the relative key mechanisms.

Gianluca Barbaro, The Digital Blower - Roland Aerophone AE-30 Pro - Motherboard


Bluetooth module and other components. All chip labels have been erased by Roland.

Gianluca Barbaro, The Digital Blower - Roland Aerophone AE-30 Pro - Motherboard

Here you can see how all the main external connectors are directly soldered to the mainboard. They all seem quite firm and sturdy, as they should be.

Gianluca Barbaro, The Digital Blower - Roland Aerophone AE-30 Pro - Motherboard

Gianluca Barbaro, The Digital Blower - Roland Aerophone AE-30 Pro - Motherboard


On the other side of the AE-30 there's a daughterboard that controls the front keys. Here are a few details.

Gianluca Barbaro, The Digital Blower - Roland Aerophone AE-30 Pro - Front keys

Gianluca Barbaro, The Digital Blower - Roland Aerophone AE-30 Pro - Front keys


The front keys mechanisms are the same as in all other Roland's Aerophones. I did the same that I did with the Aerophone Mini: I oiled all keys (this time without removing them), shook them up a little bit, then removed all the excessive oil. The results are good: the keys are much less noisy and they feel a little bit more comfortable, smooth,  under the fingers.

Gianluca Barbaro, The Digital Blower - Roland Aerophone AE-30 Pro - Front keys

I made another extreme modification to my Aerophone AE-30: I'm not a sax player so I don't use at all any palm key (I have developed a general fingering scheme that requires no modification key at all, you can find it here: it is perfectly implementable on the AE-30 as well). Seen that on the AE-30 the palm keys were quite a discomfort for me, I removed them (they can be put back anytime, without problems). 

Gianluca Barbaro, The Digital Blower - Roland Aerophone AE-30 Pro - No Palm keys

Eventually, I took a look at the "sticky" octave key and discovered that it was actually broken. In the upper part of the key on the right (the lower octave key) you can see a very thin edge that, I guess, acts as a sort of "suction" mechanism for the returning of the key. On the left, this edge was broken and still hanging around, held by a tiny thread and loose in its housing. Hence the "stickyness", I guess. I have removed the broken thread: I wouldn't say the key is fixed: it still feels different from the other one, but at least it's not sticky anymore. 

Gianluca Barbaro, The Digital Blower - Roland Aerophone AE-30 Pro - Octave keys

One last note about the silver cover in the front of the AE-30: it's the one AE-30's feature that I care less about. So I tried to remove it to re-paint it black. There are four tiny screws that seem to keep the cover in place, here is a detail from the internal side.

Gianluca Barbaro, The Digital Blower - Roland Aerophone AE-30 Pro - Cover screw

But once I removed them, the cover remained firmly in place. Eventually I discovered that the cover is actually glued to the plastic, making it impossible to remove without a hot air gun and some risk: a job for another time.

It remains a mystery though why they put in the four screws, when the cover is glued. My guess is that during their internal tests, the cover started to come away. I didn't put the screws back: let's see what happens!