Last year I bought a Roland D-50 with a broken pitch bender. This turned out to be the only thing wrong with it so it was a pretty good deal. The pitch bender actually worked fine but the lever was snapped off so I looked for a replacement. It seems to made of unobtanium.. you can’t buy them anywhere anymore. To today I tried to fit a Roland U-20 pitch bender in my D-50. Turns out the bender units are 100% identical except for the bender lever itself. The bender on a D-50 is very narrow where as the benders on most other Rolands are a lot thicker:
On the left the U-20 bender unit and on the right the D-50’s. The U-20 bender will fit right into the D-50. Even the cable is identical. One little problem: the U-20 bender touches the body of the D-50 a little bit so when you use the bender you can hear it grinding against the D-50. Purists stop reading here 😀
I just filed down the opening in the D-50 about 1mm on the bottom and the problem is solved. You can’t see this at all.. so for all you people looking for a replacement D-50 bender: pretty much everything from other D-series, JV-series, XP-series, U-20, JD-800.. probably all the same.
I’ve tested my D-50 and it works fine to. 🙂
Synths and Keyboards 