#82 RME ADI-8 DS teardown and repair

 A seller on eBay had had a couple of these units listed as faulty for a few weeks, and once i had a bit of spare cash, i decided to take the dive and snap these up. The impetus was two-fold - on one hand, as it turns out, there seems to be a bit of a "disease" going around with power supplies in RME rack units; and on the other hand not long ago, i had noticed an ad from a person in this area actually looking to buy exactly one of these units.

Some extra motivation was prompted by looking up some prices for this thing. Borderline-eyewatering, i'd say. It seems to have retailed somewhere in the 1500e area at launch (1280GBP in 2003), and still selling for anything between 500-800e used (on Reverb.com or Milk Audio Store). Gulp.....

The shipping time was spent more or less being anxious whether i had bought a couple of lemons (for all i knew, the power supplies were missing altogether), or whether i would manage to catch a break and manage to fix these up easily and make some extra cash for the holidays.

#80 MOTU Ultralite teardown

In an interesting turn of events, i actually did NOT get this one as faulty. It was more to relieve one of my 828mk2's from rehearsal-place-recording duty, and on the other hand, i managed to get it for quite cheap. In the context of, faulty ones had similar asking prices, so there's that.

#77 MOTU Ultralite mk3 Hybrid part one: teardown

Yet another score from the "morgue" - this time around, a feature-packed little bundle of audio joy, namely a MOTU Ultralite mk3 Hybrid. This was up for sale as "no longer powering up", and for a two-figure price, i couldn't pass it up.

#76 Fractal Audio Axe-FX II teardown and repair

A couple weeks back, an acquaintance contacted me about his Axe-FX II suddenly not powering up anymore. I saw this as an opportunity to at the very least take a peek under the hood of one of these things (still selling for four-figure amounts), so why not?

I had neglected to snap photos of the outside of the thing (because other priorities), so you'll have to settle for some "stock" shots. Not that there's anything overly interesting to see anyway.

#72 MOTU 828 mk3 teardown

Yet another eBay score - caught this one with a blown power supply. Blown, as in, skidmark inside the casing, circuit board scorched, tracks vaporized. But maybe i'll make that into another article on its own, someday. In the mean time, let's take a peek under the hood of one of these arguable "classics".

#70 MOTU Audio Express teardown

This summer's "already" been quite fruitful, gear-scoring-wise anyway. This find cost me a colossal 86eu, with allegedly none of the outputs working. This, in the context of it retailing for a somewhat eye-watering 500eu(!!!) or thereabouts, brand new. On the bright(?) side, it came with the original packaging, manuals still in their plastic bags, as well as a USB and a Firewire cable to boot, both also still factory-packed. So why not?

#61 MOTU 896 mk3 Hybrid teardown (post-recap)

Since relatively recently acquiring the MOTU 8M, once i got around to swapping it out for the 896 mk3 in my recording rack, i figured it might be worth doing a quick teardown of the latter, before i sell it off. I've done a really brief one over on the BadCaps.net forums when i first bought it, but it deserves some higher-res photos and a more detailed documentation of its guts. Do keep in mind that it got re-capped as soon as i got my hands on (or into?) it, so the electrolytics are not stock. But
without further ado...

#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...

#36 TC Electronic Digital Konnekt x32 teardown and repair

We're having a "productive" period, as it turns out. This time around a TC Electronic Digital Konnekt x32 audio interface / digital patchbay is on the chopping block. Or on the operating table, rather - i do indeed hope to repair, rather than dismember and mutilate this thing.

I managed to catch this, along with a twin of its, for under $200 / 200e delivered, as a "job lot", both sold as untested / faulty. The first one was shown powered up and possibly working fine (several LEDs on the front panel being lit), so potentially fine, pending tests. This second one though, not quite so much - only the blue LED halo surrounding the power button lit.

#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.

#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).