Finally reassembled and fully functional again! Swapping out the flaky particle board end cheeks for some solid wood units will be a project for another day. For now, it’s time to get this thing hooked up and get some synth jams running through it 😎
#tascam #m216 #vintage #analog #mixer #repair #SynthesizerSunday
After cleaning all the sliders and reinstalling the front panel I realized one of the VU meter backlight bulbs wasn’t coming on. It was working beforehand, but since they’re incandescent bulbs, maybe I jostled the filament enough to kill the bulb…
I figured I’d explore options for bulb replacements but wanted to check the bulb type before I ordered anything. Upon removal of the VU pcbs, I found one of the long bulb standoff/pins was actually broken. These meters are borderline unobtainium so a creative repair was in order.
I ended up drilling a small 1/16 hole just beneath the original pin and ran some solid core jumper wire into the meter body. The bulb itself still works so I’m going to leave the original frosted incandescent bulbs in for now.
While the front panel, knob and slider caps dry, it’s time to clean and lube all the sliders.
These sliders have nice vinyl dust covers on top but there are still some that appear to have had something spilled in them.
I carefully open each one, clean the resistive carbon tracks with some 91% IPA, a swab or two of Deoxit F5, and then clean and grease the frame and wiper body with some synthetic grease.
Whenever I get a crusty piece of old gear, I NEED to get it clean before I feel comfortable using it. The front panel has 30+ years of dust, dead skin, sneeze spray, who knows what.
140 knob caps, 140 lock nuts, 22 slider caps and a handful of screws later and the front panel will come off.
Off to the utility sink to get the caps and panel cleaned!
First order of business was checking functionality on all channels.
I found buss 2 wasn’t working but would pass a low signal if the slider was all the way up. A quick peek under the hood revealed the slider pcb was pushed out of contact with the wiper, likely due to something being dropped on the front panel. The sliders come off with 2 screws and I could reseat the PCB. All functions checked out after fixing a couple of these. Next step: deep cleaning. 🧼🧽
Mike Eder 🐢