I recently bought a second hand gray Octatrack MKII. I know it still has the screen protector on because it’s much less bright than my other Elektrons and I can see the borders of the protector.
I tried removing it many times but it’s pretty hard. Do you have any tips to remove it safely?
Thanks in advance!
Nick
TLDR thin but firm plastic like an extra thin guitar pick, hairdryer on the lowest setting, clean up afterwards with a water moistened soft cloth if necessary. Never solvents, if possible avoid cleaners out of a bottle.
You could use a hairdryer on the low setting briefly, but the screen protector shouldn’t have any adhesive unless it’s aftermarket, if it’s from the factory then it should just use static electricity to hold it in place. What happens sometimes is someone will leave the screen protector on for a long time and then if it gets left in a hot car, it might melt a little bit and later be more difficult to peel.
If you can’t easily get the edge up, you want to use something that is not sharp enough to scratch it, like if you have a nylon plastic spudger tool like that flat one in the center here, you can try that to get the corner up. An extra thin guitar pick would also work for this, anything similar without a sharp hard edge, but still thin enough to push at the corner and get under it.
A bit redundant, but you just want to make sure you don’t use anything sharp enough to scratch the bezel. One thing to be aware of is that the screen bezel itself is made of plastic and not glass so you don’t want to warp it or make it cloudy which is why you should use the lowest heat setting if you use a hairdryer to help loosen it. Heat will also loosen the adhesive holding the bezel in place so if you get the protector off, let it cool before you try and do anything else to it.
There shouldn’t be any residue from the static type of protector because it’s non adhesive, but if some plastic did melt onto the surface, use something gentle first like water on a soft cloth before you use any kind of windex or other cleaner. If water alone doesn’t do it, try a little bit of dish soap and water. Never use any solvent like acetone or even rubbing alcohol because it can cloud, melt, or even put fine cracks in the screen bezel in the worst case scenario.
thanks! I will try that
No worries, good luck man.
I think people should really take those things off. I’ve heard so many stories of people leaving the film on to preserve a machine’s “new” status and it becomes so unpleasant to take it off after it’s been baked on there for years
Btw, there are some companies that make screen protectors with custom dimensions. I have previously ordered custom glass screen protectors for my Digitone and Syntakt. Much better than the stock protectors!
I bought an iPad one for £1 and used a scalpel
And had lots left over for rack gear and much more
