Why is it that every children's keyboard I come across has the most annoying and imagination-inhibiting feature sets-- most notably "demo" or "songs" buttons that play complete sets at the touch of a button?

I can't stand seeing bright, intuitive children sit back and let the machine do the work when they discover the little "song" buttons, so I decided to disable this little keyboard's "demo" buttons.  All that remain now are notes and single-shot sound effects.

Disassembly was easy.  12 screws in the back, and the case came open.  6 more screws on the button panel PC board, and it lifted right off as well.  I did lose some order on the buttons themselves.. no worries though.

With great luck, this crummy piece of plastic toy keyboard used those little conductive pads that close the circuit of a "button" node just like in digital watches and keychain buttons.  Disabling involved no mechanical inhibitors (glue, button removal, etc), because it was just a matter of insulating the receptors from button pad with a strip of scotch tape.

After reassembling, it was time to test out the fix:

Perfect!  The annoying buttons don't do anything, and the keyboard still plays.  "C," It was just that easy.

Other good uses for the scotch tape were to cover the holes in the keyboard's plastic case and to reduce volume.  Why do they make these toys so loud?  And when there is a volume setting, default power-on or easiest power-on always is at the loudest.  Ridiculous.

A satisfied customer! :)