#7 Cheapo ring LED flash / light teardown & li-po mod

I had been thinking about grabbing a LED ring flash for my camera for quite some time, but finally last week, i pulled the trigger on one. Cheapest of the cheap (from what i could find on the British eBay), but still cost me a bit under 30 bucks.

That being said, it's a reasonably well-featured package: four different coloured diffusers (that go onto the front of the LED ring), eight different size adapter rings (for lens/filter threads, and onto which the light clamps on to), and the control unit that mounts into the camera flash "hot-shoe". Also, the LEDs in the light "head" are split into two halves (ie. left and right), for <ahem> creative effect when using the ring flash for macro work.

The thing normally works on 4 AA's, buuuuuut... given some of the previous posts here, you oughtta have half an idea about my feelings regarding disposable power sources... <wink-wink, nudge-nudge>

#6 Canon EOS 400D / Rebel XTi troubleshooting & repair

I got this old EOS 400D from a friend for about 35 bucks. She said it won't power on, even with a fully-charged battery. Might as well have a crack at it, eh?

On the outside it seems to be in pretty good shape. A bit of dust here and there, but hey, it's about a decade old, whaddya expect? Battery checks out fine, reading 8.15v, so that's definitely not it.

As chance would have it, between being offered the camera and receiving it, i did some digging around online, and i came across this little story here (scroll down to the second half of it). Could i (also) be fortunate enough to only need to swap out some fuses?

#5 Another Li-ion Upgrade - Cordless Trimmer

Due to my openly-admitted laziness, a while back i got myself a trimmer - it's way quicker and easier than a full shave, and i rarely need (or want, for that matter) to be totally clean shaven. But that's enough background babbling, on to the nitty-gritty. This one's mainly "what for increasing the chooch factor", as it were - thank you AvE, you crazy canuck.

#4 Dunlop Zakk Wylde ZW45 wah pedal teardown & repair

Ok, this one's a real quickie. One of the guitarists in my band got this wah (Dunlop ZW45 Zakk Wylde Cry Baby Wah) as a gift a number of years ago, and in the last few weeks it developed crackly and intermittent sound (regardless of being on or off).

Initial fiddling with the power / input / output jacks pointed towards a questionable patch-cable, but even that soon stopped working, which then turned my suspicions towards cracked solder joints (rather than the jack sockets themselves).

#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).

#2 Amphion Impact 500 (DB Series DB5004) subwoofer amplifier autopsy (and repair, hopefully)

Right, so i've had this amplifier brought in last week (sans the subwoofer enclosure itself). When i noticed the brand, i remarked to the owner that, to the best of my knowledge, Amphion stuff is anything BUT cheap. He confirmed, this whole thing having costed him something over a grand(!!!), a couple years ago.

It had allegedly been serviced before, and he pointed at an electrolytic cap. A ChemiCon SXE - totally out of place on a board otherwise full of CapXons. Yep... Oh joy...

#1 M-Audio Fast Track (mk1) gain and 18650 Li-Ion mod / upgrade

So i had this old, pre-"facelift" M-Audio Fast Track since 5-6 years ago, which had been lent to a bandmate for the last couple of years. A few weeks ago, i traded him up to a Scarlett 2i2, and i got my Fast Track back.

And then i got thinking - it has the convenient mono/stereo switch on the front (to have both inputs in mono, or input 1 on the left and 2 on the right), a headphone output, doesn't need a specific power supply (it being bus-powered)... 😏