WhinyLittleRunt
Member
I came here with a question about something but decided I should probably post some pictures of my progress...
I'm in the middle of doing a full-on recap of the unit. Just for some history, I got this unit probably 6 or 7 years ago (maybe more I can't remember) from a friend of mine who I believe got it in a gear trade at some point. The belts were gone, the idler tires were melted... you know, the typical fare on a unit that's probably not been taken care of. I gave him either 40 or 50 bucks for it.
I few years back I went ahead and revived the transport with new tires (o-rings) and belts, and it basically just started working and actually working pretty well. So I recorded some stuff on it just to test it... and it sounded good. The only problem I remember at the time was there was this slight 'pumping' artifact in the tracks, which I was later told was the DBX. I hadn't really had time to play around with the 244 in a while, so when I went back to see what I could do with it, I wound up having another transport problem, related to a crack in the PC board that ran the control motor (separate thread posted). Now with that fixed, and the unit apart, I decided to do a recap of all the boards and then adjust everything and do a full calibration.
As of right now this is my progress:
Power supply board partially re-capped (finished this last night with the main supply filter caps)
Meter PCB
One channel strip done
DBX Board
On the subject of the DBX board, I found something interesting. There is a marking in the schematic for a capacitor that is supposed to be a non-polarized film cap, C437. However, in my unit, and based on some other photos I've found of DBX boards, they used a 1uf polarized electrolytic cap:
And just for reference (ignore the yellow cap I circled, that was for something else..)
So now at this point, with the DBX board done and 1 channel strip (#4) re-capped and reinstalled, I powered it up and checked my progress. I plugged in a guitar to channel 1 and the FIRST thing I notice is that it is extremely distorted with barely any gain applied. I played around with the levels and everything but I know for a fact something is wrong if I'm getting that crackle like I blew a speaker. I have recorded direct into this with a passive guitar and had plenty of headroom. Now, this isn't to say I'm over here changing out tons of capacitors and threw something off, but I'm a little concerned since I'm only monitoring the channel strip (basically it is a mixer at this point). I checked my re-capped channel strip and it's the same.
Anyone else here do a full-on restoration, re-cap and can share any experiences? I'll post more progress as I continue along.
I'm in the middle of doing a full-on recap of the unit. Just for some history, I got this unit probably 6 or 7 years ago (maybe more I can't remember) from a friend of mine who I believe got it in a gear trade at some point. The belts were gone, the idler tires were melted... you know, the typical fare on a unit that's probably not been taken care of. I gave him either 40 or 50 bucks for it.
I few years back I went ahead and revived the transport with new tires (o-rings) and belts, and it basically just started working and actually working pretty well. So I recorded some stuff on it just to test it... and it sounded good. The only problem I remember at the time was there was this slight 'pumping' artifact in the tracks, which I was later told was the DBX. I hadn't really had time to play around with the 244 in a while, so when I went back to see what I could do with it, I wound up having another transport problem, related to a crack in the PC board that ran the control motor (separate thread posted). Now with that fixed, and the unit apart, I decided to do a recap of all the boards and then adjust everything and do a full calibration.
As of right now this is my progress:
Power supply board partially re-capped (finished this last night with the main supply filter caps)
Meter PCB
One channel strip done
DBX Board
On the subject of the DBX board, I found something interesting. There is a marking in the schematic for a capacitor that is supposed to be a non-polarized film cap, C437. However, in my unit, and based on some other photos I've found of DBX boards, they used a 1uf polarized electrolytic cap:
And just for reference (ignore the yellow cap I circled, that was for something else..)
So now at this point, with the DBX board done and 1 channel strip (#4) re-capped and reinstalled, I powered it up and checked my progress. I plugged in a guitar to channel 1 and the FIRST thing I notice is that it is extremely distorted with barely any gain applied. I played around with the levels and everything but I know for a fact something is wrong if I'm getting that crackle like I blew a speaker. I have recorded direct into this with a passive guitar and had plenty of headroom. Now, this isn't to say I'm over here changing out tons of capacitors and threw something off, but I'm a little concerned since I'm only monitoring the channel strip (basically it is a mixer at this point). I checked my re-capped channel strip and it's the same.
Anyone else here do a full-on restoration, re-cap and can share any experiences? I'll post more progress as I continue along.