Mackie 8-bus Board Users

[DDev]

I've got a question for all you Mackie 8-bus board users. Our church has a 32x8 board that is probably going to take up residence for a while in my studio when we move out of our current facility in May and get our new Midas console.

Anyway, the current board has a recurring problem that I want to be able to fix when I get it home. The aux sends on the channel strips seem to go in and out at random. The only thing that seems to help is a good thump around the 16th channel. Has anyone seen anything like this? We've had this board in for repair at least 5 different times, and it always seems to work for a week or 2 then it fails again. I'm thinking that there may be a cold solder joint somewhere, but thought it'd be worth asking if anyone else had seen this and found a solution.

Thanks,
Darryl.....

[mam]

Hello DDev,

It sounds like the dreadful ribbon cable problem. Similar situation with mine. Gobs of people have had the ribbon cables replaced. There have been 2-3 revisions. The latest revision is "G". Call Mackie tech support, give them the serial number. It may or may not be covered under warranty. Mine was, but I don't have a local service center & I wasn't going to ship it to them. They provided the cables. It was about a four hour job, but the board works like brand new!

Hope this helps,
mam

[DDev]

Thanks for the note, Mam. I haven't been involved with it much up until recently so I don't know what the past repairs have consisted of, but I'll definitely check into that.

What was the problem with the ribbon cables, anyway? coming loose, bad connections?

Anyway, thanks again.

Darryl.....

[rushfan33]

Go to Mackie's website and check out the forums. There are many stories about the same thing happening to others.

RF

[Jack Hammer]

It happned to me and I brought the board in for repair. The ribbon cable was replaced, that was about six months ago. It has worked since though once or twice I have had a problem with one of the channels but otherwise, it is better than it was. The replacement ribbon seems to do the trick.

[DDev]

Thanks for the notes, again. I don't know why I hadn't thought about checking out the Mackie discussion forum, but it looks like this is the hot topic over there.

When I get my hands on the board I will definitely be checking this out.

Cheers,
Darryl.....