Damaged MPC Live - is it salvageable?

The bag that my MPC Live was in took a nose dive off the luggage shelf on a bus. I didn't think there was any physical damage but now I see a small dent between the USB ports and the Midi ports.

When I try to turn it on it tries booting but won't get to the "hold your finger on the button" stage. It hangs for a long time, then the screen goes off. Eventually you might see the screen flick back on for milisecond at the home screen, meaning it's booted without me holding my finger on the button. I can't try to do anything though as the screen won't stay on. It also gets hot.

Before I saw the dent I thought I might be able to fix it under the warranty but it's obviously damaged.

Has anyone got any experience of this, or has anyone opened an MPC Live up before...? I'm totally gutted about this...

If you're lucky, maybe just the memory card inside has come loose (afaik, that contains the OS etc).
Would be worth checking that nothing's loose inside…that's what I'd do.

Crumb$ wrote:The bag that my MPC Live was in took a nose dive off the luggage shelf on a bus. I didn't think there was any physical damage but now I see a small dent between the USB ports and the Midi ports.

When I try to turn it on it tries booting but won't get to the "hold your finger on the button" stage. It hangs for a long time, then the screen goes off. Eventually you might see the screen flick back on for milisecond at the home screen, meaning it's booted without me holding my finger on the button. I can't try to do anything though as the screen won't stay on. It also gets hot.

Before I saw the dent I thought I might be able to fix it under the warranty but it's obviously damaged.

Has anyone got any experience of this, or has anyone opened an MPC Live up before...? I'm totally gutted about this...

Sorry to hear about this, but Akai Pro may not cover this under warranty because it's not not normal wear and tear. I see you are in London, you may want to contact Jazz Cat who repairs MPC's. He does great work, something look into if Akai will not repair it.

https://www.instagram.com/thejazzcat/
https://twitter.com/jazzcat_akai

Thanks for the replies so far. I managed to find an allan key and a leatherman and got inside the thing. I was pretty drunk on Caipirinhas by the time I got the tools but I was obsessed with seeing if I could fix it.

The internal SD card looked ok but I reseated it anyway. The good news is, it rebooted, saying it had recovered from an internal fault. I put it back together and put the external SD card back in and it went back to hanging at the MPC logo for minutes before the screen goes blank and the lights start to blink on and off.

The SD card works ok in my laptop so it seems like the SD card port must be damaged. It was inserted when the bag fell so I guess it took a knock. And yes, now I feel stupid for leaving the SD card in while travelling it. I opened the Live back up and checked for any visible damage but it all looks ok. All connections were ok.

I'm currently copying all the folders over from the SD card to a USB stick and I will try running it from the USB. I haven't tried that before but am I correct to think it's exactly the same as saving to the SD card...? ...just a different option?

I'm going to see if Jazz Cat or maybe MPC Spares can source a replacement SD card port.

One interesting thing I noticed inside was a red button labelled "recovery". Any ideas what that does...?

And, the internal SD card is 16GB, but it's holder has a sticker on it saying 10.2GB.

Ok, so here's where I'm at. With no external SD card or USB drive attached it boots up ok, albeit a bit slower than I remember. I timed it and it takes 1minute 30 seconds.

It works ok but if I insert the SD card or a USB drive the screen goes blank and the button lights begin to blink on/off. If I remove the drive I get the message about recovering from an internal fault. If I try to boot the thing up with a drive attached I have the same problem.

This points away from the damaged SD card port theory. I will try and contact Jazz Cat but I appreciate any ideas in the meantime.

Thanks !

Crumb$ wrote:Ok, so here's where I'm at. With no external SD card or USB drive attached it boots up ok, albeit a bit slower than I remember. I timed it and it takes 1minute 30 seconds.

It works ok but if I insert the SD card or a USB drive the screen goes blank and the button lights begin to blink on/off. If I remove the drive I get the message about recovering from an internal fault. If I try to boot the thing up with a drive attached I have the same problem.

This points away from the damaged SD card port theory. I will try and contact Jazz Cat but I appreciate any ideas in the meantime.

Thanks !

Call Akai first, they may take care of you.

kaydigi wrote:
Call Akai first, they may take care of you.

...I wasn't even aware that you could call them. Had a look online though and found a UK number for Numark Alesis Europe Ltd. Tel: +44 (0) 1252 896040. I spoke to Jack and he while he thought it was likely a hardware issue he advised me to try the reset from the preferences menu and as far as I can tell it's working fine again.

...and it now boots within 20 seconds! Thank you to Fanu, CharlesRandolph, and Kaydigi for responding with advice. It's really appreciated. I'm glad this forum exists... I thought i'd killed my MPC.

Just as a recap for anyone having a similar problem, my Live took a hard knock. It got slightly dented on the back plate and any time I tried booting with a drive connected (SD card or USB stick) it would blank out the screen and the control buttons would blink on and off. If I removed the drive then the unit would give a message saying 'recovered from an internal fault'. The boot time also went up dramatically to about 01:30 seconds. I went inside the unit and re-sat the internal SD card but seemingly giving the unit a RESET from the preferences page has fixed all of the issues.

Crumb$ wrote:

kaydigi wrote:
Call Akai first, they may take care of you.

...I wasn't even aware that you could call them. Had a look online though and found a UK number for Numark Alesis Europe Ltd. Tel: +44 (0) 1252 896040. I spoke to Jack and he while he thought it was likely a hardware issue he advised me to try the reset from the preferences menu and as far as I can tell it's working fine again.

...and it now boots within 20 seconds! Thank you to Fanu, CharlesRandolph, and Kaydigi for responding with advice. It's really appreciated. I'm glad this forum exists... I thought i'd killed my MPC.

Just as a recap for anyone having a similar problem, my Live took a hard knock. It got slightly dented on the back plate and any time I tried booting with a drive connected (SD card or USB stick) it would blank out the screen and the control buttons would blink on and off. If I removed the drive then the unit would give a message saying 'recovered from an internal fault'. The boot time also went up dramatically to about 01:30 seconds. I went inside the unit and re-sat the internal SD card but seemingly giving the unit a RESET from the preferences page has fixed all of the issues.

Very nice! TIP: SKB iSeries Injection-Molded Case for Akai MPC Live Sampler/Sequencer

https://www.skbcases.com/music/products/proddetail.php?f=sku_type-hard-81&id=1058&o=&offset=&c=102&s=

Any one know what the big red button on the inside does...?

countdown explosion, don't press it

It says recovery next to it. Maybe it’s the self destruct button.

Duuuuuuude! So dope that it's working again

Crumb$ wrote:

kaydigi wrote:
Call Akai first, they may take care of you.

...I wasn't even aware that you could call them. Had a look online though and found a UK number for Numark Alesis Europe Ltd. Tel: +44 (0) 1252 896040. I spoke to Jack and he while he thought it was likely a hardware issue he advised me to try the reset from the preferences menu and as far as I can tell it's working fine again.

...and it now boots within 20 seconds! Thank you to Fanu, CharlesRandolph, and Kaydigi for responding with advice. It's really appreciated. I'm glad this forum exists... I thought i'd killed my MPC.

Just as a recap for anyone having a similar problem, my Live took a hard knock. It got slightly dented on the back plate and any time I tried booting with a drive connected (SD card or USB stick) it would blank out the screen and the control buttons would blink on and off. If I removed the drive then the unit would give a message saying 'recovered from an internal fault'. The boot time also went up dramatically to about 01:30 seconds. I went inside the unit and re-sat the internal SD card but seemingly giving the unit a RESET from the preferences page has fixed all of the issues.

Glad it’s working, akai’s phone support has been real good since the release of the Ren.

We were all worried about activations and serial resets when this first started. But they have come through. A few forum member even received new units for flawed systems.

Sweet! I can imagine the frustration. Glad to see you're up & running again.

That's the SP 1200, MPC 60, SSL NEVE SOUND BUTTON. Push it and the songs mix themselves.