Bogie, when my encoder strip went, the roland tech explained that any little bits of stray stuff, over spray from the print heads or a scratch will screw up the strip. He said that the print head takes its reference off of the strip, so that it basically know where its at? so he stressed to me how important it was to keep clean, and the care required to clean it? Yaa...whatever, it works fine now, so I press print and do the happy dance. And yes when mine was broke, I too thought many evil doings on an techno design geek somewhere!!!
Fine Line Darrel