My baby is going in for surgery.

[evm1024]

new thread option

Yes, please post a pic EVM when you find one. Are they easy to spot?

I will post a photo when next I come across one. In general thy are not easy to spot. They form a hairline crack that circles the wire or pin that is soldered to the board. Close visual inspection will show them but if you do not know what you are liiking at you may not see it for what it is.

Touching the joint with a probe may or may not cause the circuit to work again.

I generally have a dead channel and by doing a bit of logic can figure out where the cold solder joins "should" be. My last one was on a 34B repro head channel 3. Sync playback was OK so somewhere from the head to the output....


--Ethan

 

[The Ghost of FM]

Good luck with it, you don't know how lucky you are to have a tech that close..............the nearest reliable Tascam guy to me is about a 12 to 13 hour drive away

Yeah, I am lucky to live so close to where he works. Most of his clients send him stuff by courier from hundreds to thousands of miles away. He's got a very large clientèle because he works on all the Major brands...I've seen Ampex's, Studer's, MCI's, Otari's, Sony's and even the occasional Mitsubishi DASH monster on his bench.

Hopefully, this evening I'll have my baby back all fixed up and ready to rock!

Cheers!

 

[The Ghost of FM]

I will post a photo when next I come across one. In general thy are not easy to spot. They form a hairline crack that circles the wire or pin that is soldered to the board. Close visual inspection will show them but if you do not know what you are liiking at you may not see it for what it is.

Touching the joint with a probe may or may not cause the circuit to work again.

I generally have a dead channel and by doing a bit of logic can figure out where the cold solder joins "should" be. My last one was on a 34B repro head channel 3. Sync playback was OK so somewhere from the head to the output....


--Ethan

I think I've got a couple of those in one of my M312B mixers. So far, tapping the top of the panel near the master stereo faders fixes the problem but it really should be opened up and fixed properly...that will probably be my next project if I can get to the infected area? If not, My Buddy Patrick may be getting some more of my money.

Cheers!

 

[The Ghost of FM]

Latest update/Epilogue

My baby survived the operation, though it took much longer to repair then what the technician guesstimated over the telephone conversation I originally had with him when I wanted to know how much this was all going to cost me to repair the numerous intermittent channels and re-lap just the sync head.

There turned out to be hundreds of cold soldering joints among the 16 channel cards, the motherboard they connect to and in the wiring harnesses that connect the amplifier unit to the transport of the MS-16. There were also several switching relays and switching transistors which needed and received replacement. The repro head, also required re-lapping in order to restore the mechanical path that the tape passes over and to ensure that the frequency response and specs could remain uniform across the 16 channels. Additionally, hundreds of contact points were oxidized and all of them needed to be restored with Caig's Deoxit Gold in paste form which rebuilds the metal surface at the molecular level and leaves a gold tipped surface that will not oxidize in the future.

All told, it took close to 20 hours of bench time to perform all the work, not including the re-lapping of both the sync and repro heads which now look and sound brand new. A fresh mechanical and electrical calibration was also performed as this is a necessity after a re-lapping procedure because of the heads being removed and reinstalled along with the standard electrical calibrations to 456.

While I am in a bit of shock over the cost of repairing and restoring my MS-16 to full functionality, I am also very pleased with how it is now running and sounding and with any luck at all, can get several more years of tracking out of this 20 year old recorder.

Cheers!

 

[apl]

Congrats! Glad everything turned out well.

 

[jpmorris]

Good that it's all up and running again.

 

[evm1024]

money well spent.

I look at that as money well spent. Your deck will now be trouble free for the next decade or more. Soon the pain of reaching for your check book will vanish. As will the frustration of flaky equipment.

It is interesting that there were cold solder joints on the channel cards. So far in my limited experience with Tascam products I've onlt come across them on the mother board interconnect pins....

Now I'm waiting for a new one so that I can get a photo to post.

 

[uzizit]

Great news Ghost... I checked out your tech's site makes me kinda wish I still lived in the Toronto area...I said "kinda" no wait a minute it's passed now..

 

[The Ghost of FM]

Great news Ghost... I checked out your tech's site makes me kinda wish I still lived in the Toronto area...I said "kinda" no wait a minute it's passed now..

I'm not here to promote or put down the city I or anyone else here lives in. What ever your gripe is with my part of the world, please keep it out of my thread.

Cheers!

 

[The Ghost of FM]

I look at that as money well spent. Your deck will now be trouble free for the next decade or more. Soon the pain of reaching for your check book will vanish. As will the frustration of flaky equipment.

It is interesting that there were cold solder joints on the channel cards. So far in my limited experience with Tascam products I've onlt come across them on the mother board interconnect pins....

Now I'm waiting for a new one so that I can get a photo to post.

I am relieved that the work has been completed and that Patrick was able to root out all of the problems of my particular machine which had a former much harder life seeing professional duty for an east end, now defunct studio for the first 12 years of its life where it was run 24/7...I guess they just plain wore it out and only performed minimal maintenance on it which is why they sold it for a fraction of its original cost which was close to $20K when it was new.

Its life with me will be a far more gentle and sheltered one as I only have the occasional project for it to be used on. With any luck, yes, I should get several great years out of it now.

The main reason why I posted this thread was to give us all a heads up that maintenance can be a major component of keeping our aging analog gear in working condition and just because we occasionally pick up a steal on the used market, we should always keep in the back of our minds and in our gear budget to factor in service too.

Cheers!

 

[noisewreck]

When I saw the title, I though you meant it was your kid that was going into surgery, and I reluctantly opened this as I wasn't really in a sappy story mood... Good luck with your multitracker.

 

[uzizit]

Geez sorry Ghost. I didn't realize humour wasn't allowed on this board.

 

[SteveMac]

I will post a photo when next I come across one. In general thy are not easy to spot. They form a hairline crack that circles the wire or pin that is soldered to the board. Close visual inspection will show them but if you do not know what you are liiking at you may not see it for what it is.

Touching the joint with a probe may or may not cause the circuit to work again.

I generally have a dead channel and by doing a bit of logic can figure out where the cold solder joins "should" be. My last one was on a 34B repro head channel 3. Sync playback was OK so somewhere from the head to the output....


--Ethan

I finally got a Tascam M35 mixer that I wanted but it has a few problems. VU Meter #4 is not working, and on the channel one input module, the xlr input is not working. I know that the problem is in the channel strip boards. I found out by swapping the channel strips. So I'm wondering if it's cold solder joints.


Congratulations on the deck GFM it must be nice to have that back in great shape.

 

[FALKEN]

please post something you've recorded!

 

[Beck]

Good to hear it was a success. Some good leads in there for the DIYer too.

 

[evm1024]

Start a new thread

I finally got a Tascam M35 mixer that I wanted but it has a few problems. VU Meter #4 is not working, and on the channel one input module, the xlr input is not working. I know that the problem is in the channel strip boards. I found out by swapping the channel strips. So I'm wondering if it's cold solder joints.


Congratulations on the deck GFM it must be nice to have that back in great shape.

HI Steve,

If you want you could start a new thread and detail your M35 repair.

Ethan

 

[cjacek]

Jeff,

I'm a bit late but I'm glad your MS-16 is back and ready to rock! It's great that you have a good tech in your area. 20+ hours is a lot of time and I can only imagine the cost ... especially that techs here take 50 - 75 bucks for an hour's work excluding parts etc .. But for a machine which originally retailed for the cost of a new car, it can't be that bad altogether...

Thanks for sharing this and your thoughts about the repair and history of the unit. Most interesting and informative.

Daniel

 

[The Ghost of FM]

please post something you've recorded!

I'll post this for now as this was the last completed song we did on the machine before the service and once the first new project is recorded, I'll post that too for those that want to compare.

Thanks again for all the responses here.

Cheers!

 

[themaddog]

Cool sounding stuff!

Makes me think of a mix between Alice Cooper and Nazareth.

-MD

 

[Bill Furnett]

Glad she's back home fresh and ready for the next 100 hits.