#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.

#33 Superlux R102 active ribbon microphone teardown & reverse-engineering

By sheer luck / accident, the other week i refreshed my Facebook main page (or "news feed" or whatever), and the first thing i saw was an ad from one of the trading groups i'm in, about a Superlux R102 (mk1) ribbon mic for sale, for a measly 30e (~$32). The seller was in a (sort-of-nearby) town i was headed to just a few days later, so i jumped at the chance. Immaculate shape, fully functional, retails for about four times as much - why not?

#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?

#31 Warwick ProFET 5.1 bass amplifier teardown & maintenance

A local buddy just brought this German beastie in, citing a dicky DI output, and an unhealthy-sounding fan. Well, when i say "German", i mean the brand itself; as one might expect, it's "obviously" made in China, as it says on the back. But isn't nearly everything (else), anyway?

#30 Double Dock Day - HP HSTNN-I11X and Dell PR03X (USB 3.0) teardown

Right, so i had been on the lookout for a cheap docking station for my Dell Precision M4800 for a while, and the other week i stumbled across and ad on a local website about a clearance sale from a university - docking stations, laptop chargers, some desktops etc. When i finally got to their premises, instead of the $5-10 prices i expected, the guy there said i could have them for some coffee-change into the tip-jar, so i walked out with two PR03X's for a mere 40-50 cents or so - me happy!

The HP dock though, was about 15$, but came with a ma-HOO-sive 230W power brick, which is for another project; expect a teardown of the brick soon. Sadly the dock wouldn't fit my HP Elitebook 6930p (only the later xx40 Elitebooks), but that doesn't mean we can't take a peek under the skirts, and then resell it to make some of the money back, right?

#29 Tie-dyed acoustic panels

I know, it's a bit of an uncharacteristic topic for this (sort of a) blog, but despite the curve-ball thrown here, bear with me. It's for a good cause... As it were.

#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.

#27 Samsung 5V 1A ETA0U81EBE USB travel charger

This one's a quickie, but i figured i might as well document it.

A friend passed me this a few weeks ago, not quite sure why. I don't recall it being mentioned as dead, only not-used. Either way, last night i wanted to charge the battery inside my modded M-Audio Fast Track, in preparation for a local gig next week. Upon plugging it into this thing, the power LED flashed up for an instant, then nothing. I figured it might not like the USB data lines being tied together, as they often are, in chargers; it powered on and worked well with another charger. But that prompted me to crack this one open.

#26 Cheap & easy DIY LED light panels

Recycling's all the rage nowadays, right? Right..? Well, either way, freebie raw materials for projects are always welcome, that's something i'm pretty sure we can all agree on. Now, i'm not admitting to be a hoarder, far from it, but i kinda-sorta couldn't bring myself to throw away the dead (read: cracked) laptop LCDs that i had replaced for various clients at work. And what with "finally" expanding this blog onto YouTube, i figured i'd need some extra lighting for the workbench. Catching my drift yet?