Don't do this!

[MONTE]

I just spent 10 hrs. repairing and rebuilding a Mackie board that got a "gooey liquid" spilled inside of it. My brain being fried, I must vent!!!! Here are a few things common sense says you should already know, but aparently some still don't.

1) Mackie boards suck to repair. While they may sound alright for the price, if it ever breaks out of warranty your going to pay that money you saved at purchase time on a large repair bill. The PC board in a Mackie is just that...one big circuit board (no seperate channel strips). If ANYTHING goes wrong with the board, every single knob screw and nut must be removed to access the component side of the board. If you can afford it, try to buy a mixer with seperate channel pc boards (if anyone makes one anymore!)

2) DON'T SET DRINKS IN SPILLING RANGE OF ANYTHING ELECTRONIC...especially if there are holes in the top of it (vent holes, slider slots, etc.) It doesn't matter if your careful. Everybody goofs up now and then. Mop heads are cheaper than electronic repair!

3) If you do spill into a piece of gear don't try to save money by waiting 'till it dries and then plugging it in again. Besides the obvious risk of electrocution, if liquid is still remaing in the unit you could damage it further and the repair could cost even more.
Even if the unit does work initially, I gaurantee you at least some corrosion will begin to eat away at component leads and pc boards. Depending on how much and what kind of liquid it is, there could eventually be enough corrosive damage to render "it" useless.

4) If some drunken "ahole" intentionally throws a drink on your board during a live performance get his credit card number BEFORE you kill him. Set his severed head neatly on top of your effects rack as a constant reminder to all those contemplating similar actions.

[Garak]

You might want to shrink the head before you put it on top of the rack. It should smell less that way.

Soundcraft, Allen&heath, Midas, etc... all make mixers with vertical pcbs for each channel. Its only the really cheep stuff like mackie and behringer that you have to compeatly deknob to repair.

[Speeddemon]

Garak, what about the cheaper Soundcraft''s Spirit line?
Folio Notepad, F1, FX8, FX16, SX? I am especially interested in your comments about the Folio SX...

I have a thread about this one up, but no one seems to answer me...

cheerz,
Speedy

[mixmkr]

one friggin PC board for the Mackie....that answers all my questions

[The Green Hornet]

Yo Monte:

Since I have a "compact" studio built in what was a bedroom, the area is not huge. I DO NOT ALLOW ANY LIQUIDS in the studio. So, the worst I'm looking at is a sneeze, [I hope].

The folks who OWN the gear care the most about it.

Green Hornet

[MONTE]

I'm the same about my own gear (probably anal as far as most people are concerned). I go through a couple of boards a week at my shop though and I can't believe how some people treat their gear! Everything from 6 packs dumped into them from broken faders and knobs 'cause they can't afford a case. That's another one of my peeves...when someone says they can't afford a case but they bring the piece into the shop 6 times a year. Pretty soon they could have bought 10 cases! Oh well....job security I guess?

[MONTE]

I almost forgot...the board I mention above was not mine. Chances of this happening to my gear are about 9999 to 1!