Well, it's really been a while but besides a lot of touring we continued work on MV3. While my friend and studio owner prepared all the new studio wiring (thanks to Jim for prvoviding the EDAC connectors), sold the D&R Triton (which was a great desk on its own, we have another frame with a few channels in our mastering suite) and prepared the control room (new racks and cabling) I spent most of my time hunting the fault which caused the fuse resistors on the channel inputs to burn while powering on the console.
It was a PITA and in the end it was something really simple (as it is most of the time). First I realised there where two input versions using Jensen transformers. Our desk has 82E01 cards which use a very simple mic amp design using just one 5534. There is another version (82E001, spot the difference) using a two stage mic input. The BBC had an additional HF filter added right after the transformer. It's a 100pF capacitor that is connected to ground. Due to the board layout this connection is made using a simple wire bridge. This wire corroded over time and damaged the protecting laquer of the board. Because the bridge linked the capacitor to ground this caused a short of the negative supply rail (which was the line going under the bridge). This only happened on startup thanks to the very powerful Atomic power supply (which is really great to have). Well, to be sure we removed the link and the capacitor (I guess the BBC wanted to prevent any HF signals getting in the way) and the link and we had no burning resistors any more. I'm happy we finally found the fault as this was a show stopper but it took so much time and prevented me from taking care of other problems. At this point thanks to Andy for selling us a channel extender which really helped.
Anyway, last sunday the SSL moved from the room where we did most of the restauration work to it's final parking posistion in the control room. We had to remove one wall but everything went really well. We added plasmas and those fired up nicely (powered by the Atomic plasma power brick). The monitor section is still not working but I connected a pair of NS10 and brought a couple of tracks from the DAW to the board and we played around with it for about two hours. Then one side of the quad bus stereo outs stopped working (there is only a very low, distorted signal). I think the mix amp cards are ok as chaning them around does nothing. I think the problem is on the 25 card and fixing this is my next task. I think I'll try the guitar amp probing method as my scope has a bad hair day for a month now. Then I still have to fix the monitor outs and I think the 24 card has some issues. PFL only wents out when the LF monitor cut is pressed. I'm sorry I have to be rude but WTF?
Well, it's really been a while but besides a lot of touring we continued work on MV3. While my friend and studio owner prepared all the new studio wiring (thanks to Jim for prvoviding the EDAC connectors), sold the D&R Triton (which was a great desk on its own, we have another frame with a few channels in our mastering suite) and prepared the control room (new racks and cabling) I spent most of my time hunting the fault which caused the fuse resistors on the channel inputs to burn while powering on the console.
It was a PITA and in the end it was something really simple (as it is most of the time). First I realised there where two input versions using Jensen transformers. Our desk has 82E01 cards which use a very simple mic amp design using just one 5534. There is another version (82E001, spot the difference) using a two stage mic input. The BBC had an additional HF filter added right after the transformer. It's a 100pF capacitor that is connected to ground. Due to the board layout this connection is made using a simple wire bridge. This wire corroded over time and damaged the protecting laquer of the board. Because the bridge linked the capacitor to ground this caused a short of the negative supply rail (which was the line going under the bridge). This only happened on startup thanks to the very powerful Atomic power supply (which is really great to have). Well, to be sure we removed the link and the capacitor (I guess the BBC wanted to prevent any HF signals getting in the way) and the link and we had no burning resistors any more. I'm happy we finally found the fault as this was a show stopper but it took so much time and prevented me from taking care of other problems.
At this point thanks to Andy for selling us a channel extender which really helped.
Anyway, last sunday the SSL moved from the room where we did most of the restauration work to it's final parking posistion in the control room. We had to remove one wall but everything went really well. We added plasmas and those fired up nicely (powered by the Atomic plasma power brick). The monitor section is still not working but I connected a pair of NS10 and brought a couple of tracks from the DAW to the board and we played around with it for about two hours. Then one side of the quad bus stereo outs stopped working (there is only a very low, distorted signal). I think the mix amp cards are ok as chaning them around does nothing. I think the problem is on the 25 card and fixing this is my next task. I think I'll try the guitar amp probing method as my scope has a bad hair day for a month now. Then I still have to fix the monitor outs and I think the 24 card has some issues. PFL only wents out when the LF monitor cut is pressed. I'm sorry I have to be rude but WTF?
I'll post some details of the custom BBC panels for Neil in a minute. For those stopping reading here, have a nice summer.
Greetings,
Martin
