Soldering Troubleshooting

[fathom]

Hello All, this is my first post!

I have owned a Das Keyboard 4 with blue switches for about 6 months. I recently changed jobs into a smaller work environment which would not allow such racket, so I tried my hand at modding it with clear switches. After disassembling, desoldering, and soldering the new switches, I am unable to get a handful of keys to work.  As far as I can tell, the solder job on these keys are identical to the functioning keys.

Does anyone have any tips on troubleshooting such an issue? I only know the basics of soldering/electronics.  I've tried soldering/resoldering some of the keys to no avail.

The keys in particular are ASDF, JKL;, and Esc, 1, Tab, Q. As you can see they are clustered together, so I was thinking this may mean something.

Any help is really appreciated, thanks!

EDIT: The keyboard has plate-mounted switches

[MOZ]

Please check this thread: http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=42824.0. It is an abundance of knowledge.

[fathom]

Please check this thread: http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=42824.0. It is an abundance of knowledge.

Thank you for the link. A lot of good information there. Looks like I need to pick up a multimeter to pinpoint the exact problem and go from there.

[fathom]

I've narrowed down the issue. It appears my soldering was not at fault. Instead, it looks like I was a bit too careless when removing the PCBs from the casing. I made a small tear in the flat flex cable that connects the main PCB to the Media controls PCB. Only 3 of the connections were severed.

Unfortunately, these are a pain to fix, so my options are to get a replacement cable from Das, attempt to solder small gauge wires to fix the few severed connections, or trash it

[Melvang]

I would suggest repairing first if you have the tools for it.  If not, I would say get a replacement.

[fathom]

For anyone wondering, I was unable to get a replacement part from Das or fix it myself. I sent it off to theChemist for repairs, now everything works great! Here is his thread, http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=59526.0