#60 MOTU 8M teardown

Well, this one's a "biggie" - i had been lusting after one of these for a few years now, but the price was (and technically still is) on the prohibitive side, retailing at ~$1300-1500, depending where you look. Fortunately though, i've been stalking eBay off and on for one of these, and a used one happened to pop up just the other week, on auction. To my amazement and delight, despite there being at least 6 other "watchers", i was fortunate enough to win it for the opening bid, ie. about half the price of a new one.

#59 MOTU 828 mk2 teardown

Even though this is the 4th or 5th of these units that has gone through my hands, looks like i never documented a teardown of one - shame on me! Time to rectify that issue then, wouldn't you say? I grabbed this one off eBay for about 60 bucks or so, delivered. On one hand, because it was pretty dirt cheap at this money, and on the other hand, because it will be involved in a project idea i had a good few years ago. And yes, "as usual" (by now), this one had a busted Firewire connection, but for my own (nefarious?) purposes, i don't need that anyway.

#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.

#56 Apogee Ensemble Firewire teardown

[[[ Repair can be found here ]]]

This came up on eBay the other week as faulty - inputs 1/2 and outputs 1/2 seemingly dead. First instinct was, 'obviously', look up photos online in the hope of finding some internal shots. A few minutes later, bingo: four CS4272's in there. Now, what're the odds one of them is handling the bad pair of ins & outs? Quite a bit higher than the analog input of one, and the analog output of another to be bad, wouldn't you say? But let's not get ahead of ourselves (too much), and take things one step at a time...

#52 Solar A2.7 & Fishman Fluence Keith Merrow, part two

Aaaaand it's back! Not because of technical issues though. Due to chance, and the limited speed of international shipping, only the day after the owner got his guitar back, did the Fishman rechargeable battery-pack get delivered, just only too late to include it in the previous operation. But no matter, this should be far less involved than that.

#50 Philips HTS7201 Soundhub Home Theater (2.1) teardown & repair

This just came in, with the symptom description of "will no longer turn on". Fair enough, sounds like a power supply issue then. Apparently this retailed around $400-ish when new (according to a 2012 review i found online) - not exactly bottom-of-the-barrel, but it's still very much in the mainstream/consumer range, so i'm expecting crap caps to be the root cause. But time will tell.

#49 Joyo ZoMBie, part two - analysis and repair

It took the best part of an evening and a couple hours the next day, but i managed to lift the schematic for the whole preamp board. I also recreated the board, but that was mostly for sanity-checking. I used all the same component designators, but didn't bother measuring all the dozens of small ceramic caps, because there's only SO far i'm willing to go...

#48 JBL Charge 3 Bluetooth speaker teardown

This JBL Charge 3 came in last week in need of a micro-USB (charging) connector replacement. First thing i did was to look up how to take apart the thing, and the good people at iFixit had a comprehensible enough guide.

The connector board is totally separate from the mainboard, so the "repair" part was trivial, and done within minutes. But the more interesting stuff lies deeper inside. Sure, my photography may never get to be quite as pretty as iFixit's, but on the other hand, you're not here (just) for pretty pictures, are you? You're here to see what makes things tick. Or at least that's the curiosity that drives me to take apart stuff like this.

#47 Joyo ZoMBie guitar amplifier teardown

My bandmate got his hands on this Joyo ZoMBie about a week or two back; it was sold as faulty. No idea how or why, but there's something dicky with the tone control - on some power-ups it works fine, but sometimes quits working (ie. sounds like the setting got stuck at some random point along the travel of the knob), no matter how much you twist it. Power cycling sometimes helps, but inconsistently, and even if it does, it just "gives up" again, sooner or later.

#45 Pedal pandemonium, part one - Fortin Grind

A local guitarist friend of mine recently upgraded his rig to a Fractal AX8, and as such, a couple of his overdrive pedals got relegated to (mostly) sitting on a shelf. Knowing some of my interests, he offered to lend them to me, to have a look on the inside, out of sheer curiosity.

First on the chopping block (as it were), a Fortin Grind. 

#41 Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 (1st gen) teardown & repair(?)

A local friend bought this slightly battle-scarred Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 off a buddy of his. The reported issue was some random / intermittent noise affecting only the inputs. Time will tell if that was conveyed to me accurately, or if it's a more global issue. First thing's first though - having a wee little look-see on the inside.

#39 M-Audio Profire 2626 teardown and repair

Ebay strikes again - this time, a pretty damn cheap (to acquire) M-Audio Profire 2626 Firewire audio interface. I maintain it's still the cheapest way, to this day, to get 24 inputs and outputs to and from a computer. Most other 1U (rackmount) interfaces will give you 8 mic preamps but only one bank of ADAT. The ones with two sets of ADAT I/O will cost you a pretty penny, though.

Either way, this was sold as "not detected by the computer", so my bet's on the Firewire chip being toast, "as usual". Can you see a pattern emerging here?

#38 Focusrite Scarlett 18i8 (1st gen) teardown

Yet another "sold as faulty" eBay catch - a nice little(?) Focusrite Scarlett 18i8 USB audio interface. Which turned out to actually have nothing at all wrong with it.

Admittedly, i went against the first commandment of teardowns (ie. "Don't turn it on; take it apaaaah't!.."), but only because it was the first troubleshooting step, and it used the same drivers as my Scarlett 18i6 "daily driver".

#37 Presonus Audiobox 1818VSL teardown and troubleshooting (part 1)

Together with the pair of Konnekt x32's (one of which is dealt with in the previous write-up here), i also got one of these Presonus Audiobox 1818VSL's. Also sold as untested, but powered up and allegedly detected by a Mac, so i figured it couldn't have been too far gone (or fubar'd).

The reality of it turned out to be a wee bit more complicated than one might've hoped...

#35 Focusrite Saffire Pro 24 DSP teardown and repair

Yet another sold-as-faulty eBay catch - a nice little Focusrite Saffire Pro 24 DSP Firewire audio interface. The listing said:

"I bought this online and it is not working or it is not compatible with my computer. My computer is not recognising this audio interface. So I am selling it as not working."

 Fine by me. The photo of the back showed the Firewire port as looking quite pristine, so it wasn't a case of connector-inserted-upside-down. And for the price i won the auction for, it was worth the gamble. A frontal photo did show it powered up, so at the very least, it wasn't dead.

#34 MOTU Traveler mk3 teardown and repair

Hunting for faulty stuff on eBay has been fruitful yet again: this time, a MOTU Traveler mk3 Firewire audio interface. The reported issue was by now, the "classic", dead Firewire.

A pretty comprehensive little package, with loads of features shoehorned into quite a compact package - 1RU thickness / height, but only about 80% of the width.

#32 M-Audio (Avid) Fast Track C600 teardown & repair

This little bugger, an M-Audio / Avid Fast Track C600, was listed as faulty on eBay - description said it would no longer power up, regardless of it being bus-powered or having its own external power supply connected. Got it shipped for 30eu / $30, so why not?

#28 Active full-range surround speaker project (BN96-12832 & TPA3118)

Since the "unofficial" theme of this blog seems to be repair, recycling and repurposing (more or less), i finally got around to getting knee-deep into this idea, which i started devising quite a while ago - a pair of "slimline" surround speakers.

Disclaimers:
 - No, these are not meant (or supposed) to be "hi-fi". More just for a bit of "ambient noise", if you will, for movies with 5.1 soundtracks. That, and possibly alternative monitoring for checking mixes.
 - No, these are not meant to go terribly loud. Due to, let's call them, physical constraints, they'll be placed at the corners of my sofa (right up against the wall, opposite the TV and the "mains"), so no huge SPL's are required.

#15 Alesis io|26 repair & modding

So, i got my hands on one of these Alesis io|26 interfaces for pretty cheap (50 bucks delivered). "Of course", i bought it as faulty (can you see a pattern yet?), with the already "classic" issue of dead Firewire chip (the ubiquitous Texas Instruments TSB41AB2).

I went for it mainly for two reasons. First, because i knew it was based on the TC Applied Technologies Dice II chip, and as such, should have flexible enough mixing / routing options; second, due to the ADAT inputs available. The sort of "added bonus", one might say, were the gain adjustments for the 8 analog (mic/line) inputs.

#3 MOTU 8Pre teardown & gain adjustment pot replacement

On the latest drum tracking session i surprisingly discovered that channel 8 on the MOTU 8pre in my recording rig was noisy and useful-signal-less. This same unit had a similar issue with channel 6 when i bought it (as faulty, with a shot Firewire chip).

Fortunately, when i was about to take care of ch6, i got two replacement pots. When investigating the issue, i had read it's a relatively common occurrence, so i figured that as long as i'm contacting the local MOTU distributor, might as well get an extra / spare one, just in case (especially since i had two 8Pres at the time).