#58 Behringer FirePower FCA1616 teardown

Long time no see, eh? Well, what can you do when the new job's kicking you in the rear end? Regardless, new patient on the table this time around - A not-that-often-encountered Behringer audio interface (now discontinued, "obviously"). I took the gamble on it primarily because it was cheap, secondly because i wanted to take a peek under the hood, and somewhat connected to that, curious about if and what "magic mojo" might the touted Midas preamps contain.

#25 Behringer ADA8000 "Ultragain Digital" revival

I got my hands on one of these Behringer Ultragain Pro-8 Digital a few months ago, as faulty (as in, totally dead) for about 50$ shipped. Having done some preemptive googling before going for it, i was expecting the transformer to be toasted. Sure enough, that's exactly what the problem was - one half of the center-tapped primary measured in the hundreds of kohm, so pretty much open-circuit (as opposed to the 50-odd ohms the remaining good half measured).

Initially i was planning on finding / getting a "drop-in replacement" toroidal transformer, ie. similarly sized physically and power-wise, but with less insanely-high secondary voltages. The stock one, according to some "inspection notes" i found online, seems to have had roughly 2x20VAC windings for the analog +/-15V (meaning the voltage regulators had to "burn off" uselessly much power / voltage), 12VAC for the 5V regulators, and a whopping 58VAC winding for the phantom power regulator. That's about a 50% overkill across the board. One can only wonder just what possessed them to spec the transformer quite like that, especially since it must've been a custom order - you'll rarely find retail units with more than two (identical) secondary windings, and when you do, expect to pay a pretty penny for'em.