Alps KCA Series

Alps KCA Series is known only from the Roland CR-78, which used switch KCA10037. This is Roland part 001-231, listed in the service manual dated 1979-06-20 (see non-keyboard part data). One would expect this to be a newer part than S-generation types, yet there are SCK types with newer part numbers from later service manuals: 001-273 (SCK-41097) in the Roland CR-68 (service manual dated a little earlier at 1979-03-15) and 001-275 (SCK41168) and 001-276 (SCK41167) from the Roland CSQ-600 (September 1980) and Roland CSQ-100 (November 1982).

Although lots of websites depict Roland CR-78 repair projects, they are all historical jobs and it has proven impossible to find anyone who owns a CR-78 and who is willing to examine the switch. There are also apparent examples of Roland substituting switches during production (for example, the CR-78’s companion write switch unit WS-1 used both KCC Cream and KED): examples are too scarce to form any clear idea of what KCA might have been. KCA is also missing from an early 1980s Alps keyboard switches catalogue, making it either a specialist type or one that went end of life around that time.