ST164 Info
I’m pretty sure that SoundTech is farming out their repairs. In most cases they will recommend a repair station or a “Maverick” tech that is registered with Sound Tech for referrals. For older units like the 164, even these troubleshooters are going to find it difficult to repair this item. On a scale from 1-10, 10 being the most difficult to work on, it’s a 10. It’s construction isn’t tech friendly. It’s also sort of a beast, heavy, not easy to disassembly or reassemble for that matter, and the repair is compounded by no main schematic available and obsolete parts, mainly IC’s. SoundTech had schematics at one time but blame a move to another location for the loss of many hard copies.
I’ve found that the electrical akles heel of this unit is it’s aux and main output circuits. These ports don’t like being connected or disconnected with another powered unit while the power is on (not a good practice in any situation). Switching cables on the fly to other powered units can blow it’s output circuits and damage power distribution circuits. Newer IC’s have shorting protection built in. The IC’s used in this system don’t although that technology was available when this unit was conceived. This doesn’t mean that the act will blow the chips every time. It only means the average is high to do damage. Bad cabling is another cause of damage.
Another problem is popping/static switches and noisy controls. There’s a chemical called “De-ox-id”. Comes in a small bottle and/or spray. The GC Electronics brand is the economic version of the original DeoxIT, made by CAIG who doesn’t supply wholesalers as GC does. Although I’ve used both, De-ox-id isn’t bad and has done me good service. However for the real McCoy, acquire DeoxIT. With either, use a hypodermic needle to apply it from a bottle, or you can use the spray for something like bulk XLR male connectors, etc. Either use, it doesn’t take much. Just a coating will do.
For the controls and switches on the 164, both the control knob, and the switch knobs pull off. I use pair of hemostats to remove the switch buttons. With a hypodermic partially loaded, for the controls, try to get the hypo where the shaft comes out of the control. Sometimes a slight push to one side will open a small enough gap for the chemical to penetrate, and give it a couple of drops. The chemical is a “runner” so it’ll flow to the surface of the internal wafers. Cycle the controls fully in both directions several times. You can do this with the unit on if you wish. With gains up high enough to monitor the static that the control makes, you will know when it works. Repeat this for the switches as well.
Here’s some URL’s that will explain this chemical better.
http://www.newark.com/product-details/text/catalog/59472.html
http://store.caig.com/s.nl/sc.2/category.188/it.A/id.1525/.f
From
a Maverick Tech. Have fun.
ae1tektrax@hotmail.com
Subject line should include – ST164
