Roland D-20 Restoration Project

This is a series of videos showing how I undertook the restoration of my Roland D-20.

Part 1 - Roland D-20 Assessment

This first video opens a restoration series built around a long-owned Roland D-20 that has spent most of its life tucked away in its case. Now installed in the studio, the Roland D-20 has revealed a handful of issues that need sorting before it can be played properly again. The bodywork itself is in good shape, with only a couple of small dings and a mark to show for its age, so the real work lies inside. The presenter places the Roland D-20 within Roland's broader D-series lineage, noting that it followed shortly after the D-50 and was produced during the same era as several related models. Unlike a straightforward synthesiser, the Roland D-20 is a workstation, built with an onboard rhythm section and sequencer that let a player construct and lock together their own patterns rather than depending purely on its preset sounds, a feature that arguably makes it the more flexible instrument of the two.

Two faults take centre stage in this opening assessment of the Roland D-20. The first is a low battery warning that had been showing on the display for some months, prompting an internal battery swap as the natural first step, something the presenter treats as routine on any vintage machine regardless of its outward condition. The second is a card reader that stubbornly rejects every memory card offered to it with an “illegal card” message. Dirty or corroded contacts are the suspected culprit, since the card slots on machines of this vintage were left without any dust cover and so gathered decades of grease and grime; a careful clean is planned once the case of the Roland D-20 is open.

Beyond these two headline faults, the floppy disc drive is also loading unreliably and is expected to benefit from lubrication and a head clean, while the keys themselves have picked up enough dust and grime over the years to feel slightly sticky under the fingers and will be polished with a gentle cutting compound. Looking ahead, the presenter sketches out the shape of the wider series, which will go on to cover backing up and restoring the Roland D-20’s data via SYSEX, giving viewers a complete route through returning this workstation to full working order.

Part 2 – How to Access the Roland D-20

The second video walks through the process of opening up the Roland D-20 to reach the circuitry inside. As a bottom loader, the whole unit has to be turned upside down before any of the fixing screws can be reached, so the presenter recommends cushioning the keyboard on expanded foam first, protecting protruding parts such as the pitch-bend and modulation joystick from the workbench beneath. Removing the back panel means working through a run of screws, several of which turn out to be loose or missing altogether, a sign that this particular Roland D-20 had been opened before. After more than three decades, this kind of wear is described as typical, and some of the more tired screws are earmarked for replacement later in the restoration.

With the back cover off, the video offers a guided tour of what sits inside the Roland D-20. The power supply occupies one side, including a glass fuse and a multi-tap transformer able to run the Roland D-20 on different regional voltages, while the opposite side houses the CPU, battery, firmware chip and logic board that form the instrument's electronic core. The presenter notes that this particular firmware version isn't necessarily the most recent one available. A further board handling the buttons, switches and display sits beneath the logic board and is only reachable once the keyboard frame has been lifted clear.  

Finally, attention turns to the disc drive, which is tucked behind the metal keyboard frame and proves more awkward to reach than expected, needing the frame removed and several stubbornly placed screws undone. The video closes with a look ahead to the next instalment, which will focus on replacing the internal battery inside this well-travelled Roland D-20.

Finally, attention turns to the disc drive, which is tucked behind the metal keyboard frame and proves more awkward to reach than expected, needing the frame removed and several stubbornly placed screws undone. The video closes with a look ahead to the next instalment, which will focus on replacing the internal battery inside this well-travelled Roland D-20.