#14 TC Electronic Studio Konnekt 48 "Dice II STD" replacement / transplant

A couple years ago i got my hands on a faulty one of these. Details of the revival process can be found over here; photos visible only for forum members though. Buuuuut since i'm in a good mood, OVER HERE you can find the link to a Google Drive folder with all the (relevant) photos i had posted on that particular thread - you're welcome...

The last issue i had to take care of, back then, was the (apparent?) shorting to ground that some of the I2S clock signal lines, coming out of the Dice II chip. Fortunately, it has several sets of these clock output signals in use, so between cutting a couple traces and adding some wire jumpers, i managed to put together and distribute a healthy set of clock signals to all the ADC & DAC chips that required them.

PS: It seems that the original link for the schematics of this unit is dead nowadays ("thank you", Music Group?), but for the sake of completeness and posterity, i've reuploaded it right over here.

#13 Fisher RS-1022 rehabilitation and bling-ification

So i had this old Fisher RS-1022 Studio Standard stereo receiver brought in, with one of the fuses in-line with the speaker outputs blown. Fair enough, that was easy enough to replace, they made it quite easy, with the fuseholders being mounted right on the rear panel. The clamps were nowhere near as elastic (or firm) as they might've once been, but with a pair of needle-nose pliers and a bit of creativity, that was no biggie.

Second issue, five of the six lamps that illuminate the tuning scale and the radio signal level were dead. In four of the dead ones, the fillament was attached only at one end, and in the fifth, it was attached at neither end. Interesting little lamps, 6.3v AC, 250mA, in a similar casing as 6x32mm glass fuses. Good luck finding replacement ones (which may very well just end up dying again anyway); these will get replaced with a few white LEDs recovered from a laptop display's backlight.

#12 Cheap chinese BM700 / BM800 microphone modding / upgrade (to say the least).

<Part 2 can be found right over here>

Last year, after hearing (or rather, after reading) about these cheapo BM700 / BM800 microphones, over on the GroupDIY forum, i decided to get a few myself. They were cheap enough (under 20 bucks a piece), and i figured they would, at the very least, make for reasonable enough donor bodies.

Some credit is due in no small part to Mr. Henry Spragens, whose microphone section on his blog served as a considerable portion of inspiration for this endeavour. Said blog is a fountain of knowledge, testing and ideas for anyone interested in condenser microphone modding or even building from scratch.

#11 sE Electronics sE X1 rebuild

It's been a good few years since this mic (sE Electronics X1) came into my possession. As many others i have, i bought this one as faulty. The main problem was, it was noisy as hell (think wind-noise, or the sound of blowing straight into a microphone).

Once i had another capsule to test this with (a temporarily removed capsule from a Shure KSM27), i figured i'd hook it up to the X1 to see whether the capsule was the source of the noise. Nope, the noise was still there. After i ruled out the (stock) capsule, i replaced it with a 100pF styroflex capacitor, for minimal hassle (and risk of damaging a capsule) during subsequent testing of the electronics.

#10 A litle K67 (microphone capsule) fun

From among my microphone collection, as a result (or rather, a consequence) of various upgrades and capsule replacements, i kept the stock ones (which were still good), for later experiments or "just in case". Today, that day arrived.

Among a few others, i had a some stock single-sided K67-type large diaphragm condenser capsules out of the several AKG Perception 200's i've collected these last few years. Fortunately, they're actually assembled out of two nearly-identical halves. The front has the gold-sputtered Mylar / PET diaphragm, and the rear one (since they're cardioid-only capsules) is skinned with a plain, non-metallized diaphragm.

#9 Revisited: Amphion Impact 500 (DB Series DB5004) subwoofer amplifier - DONE!

Got the fresh parts the other week, and installed them all. That, plus rebuilding the two blown and "distressed" traces, respectively.

#8 Low battery blinking indicator

This thought came out of the LED ring flash li-po mod, since the battery indication programmed into the microcontroller was "calibrated" for 100% being the 6v coming out of four full AA batteries, and (close to) 0% around 3.8-4v. Obviously, since a single lithium cell is only 4.2v when full, the stock battery indicator's out of whack.

Next step - i wanted a blinking indicator. Partially, because a solidly-lit LED would be a constant drain, and partially because a flashing light is more noticeable - think turn-signals on cars, or the emergency lights on police cars & ambulances.