Questionable Repairs

Quadraverb

The Alesis Quadraverb is a marvel of ambient lush reverbs and late 80s digital effects. Mine was noisy, hissy, and had ground loops. I pulled it apart, recapped it, cleaned all the knobs and buttons. It is substantially quieter, the ground loop has disappeared, sounds INCREDIBLE and every delay effect outputs no sound below 1khz.

DBX 163

I read online how to mod these. I liked it as it was, but wasn't finding myself using it much. I attempted to fix it. I either lost several screws or just forgot how to put it back together. It still works but now there's a lot of rattling. I do not notice a difference in how it sounds.

ART DR-X

A confluence of 80s indulgence, technology, and bad decisions, the ART DR-X was apparently $900 when released. It featured processing that allows for ten simultaneous effects and has an unnavigable control system and an unpredictable menu of terrible effects. It does, however, contain the greatest gated dirty drum reverb for shoegaze and certain music. I believe they sold like four of them and I have three.

My main unit was noisy, hissy, and occasionally would only output through channel one. I installed boutique caps and replaced several resistors, battery holder, fuses, and the transformer mount. The boards inside appear as though this piece was designed by actually insane people. Has a daughter board that is incredibly difficult to remove. After install it sounds better than ever before, but the LCD screen now displays Enigma Machine codes and the LED Program Indicator selects random numbers to display.

KORG GR-1

A nearly perfect reverb. Actual springs. An actual gate. Three-band EQ. True stereo. Incredible 80s Korg heritage. Mine would 60hz hum when the gate was open, but was absolutely quiet when the gate was closed. Tracked it down to the post-gate section of the board, obviously, but decided to replace every cap. Reflowed all ground connections and ensured RF from the nearby transformer wasn't interfering with the spring section. The reverb is cleaner, sparklier, and more vibrant than I've ever heard a spring reverb. Except for the ground loop. That's still there.

Ashly SC50
Blueface

Rick Carson at the beautiful Make Believe Studios gave me this Ashly SC50 to work on. It wasn't powering up. Replaced fuse holder, power switch, and all the caps. Cleaned off all of the foam that disintegrates from the top of these things. Removed and cleaned all ICs and replaced all 0 ohm resistors. It now powers up but passes no audio.

Audio Arts Comp

Charlie Ames gave me this. Didn't power on. Had signal everywhere it should but still wouldn't power on. Everything looked fine. Plugged it in and the LED was just not working. Sounded like shit so it's in my garage.

Yamaha SPX90

You know the SPX90. It's perfect for what it is, which is a kind little box of fun effects made by happy people. Mine wasn't turning on. Opened it up and started testing. Shocked the absolute hell out of me. Stumbled around breathing heavy and had to sit down for a few minutes to catch my breath. Gave it to a guy who says he fixes stuff. Talked to him last month and he said he threw it away.

Summit Audio
TLA-50

The immensely talented Lucas Kellison gave me this box. Used it a few times and then it went completely south. Noisy and microphonic and hissy and barely passed audio. All signs pointed to the tube being bad. Replaced the tube and now it is noisy and microphonic and hissy and barely passes audio.

Alesis CLX-440

A bonkers compressor that nobody likes but has really good monitoring and a surprisingly useful gate with a nice lookahead feature. Has a massive ground loop. Opened it up and everything is covered in some sort of weird stringy glue. put it back together and it's hanging in my garage.

SUCCESS
Eventide H3000 D/SE

It was clicking and popping and only displaying the initialization screen. I opened it up and gasped because what the actual fuck am I doing opening up an Eventide H3000 for? I pushed a bunch of the ICs down and played around with the power connector. Works fine now.

SUCCESS
Boss CL-50

I like this little box. Sounds great on low brass. Use it whenever I have trombone solos in rock songs. So, basically once. Turned it on and it wasn't working at all. Recapped it. Prodded around touching stuff. Works fine now.

UPCOMING
Kustom bass amp

I had one of these when I was younger. I gave it away about 20 years ago. Wanted another one so went out and got a pretty one. It doesn't work so I'm going to recap it. Expecting to accidentally touch the wrong thing and die.

Let me fix your cables

I've fixed hundreds, possibly thousands of cables. If you want me to fix yours, I'll do it for ten bucks per cable. Snakes are substantially more. I can create custom cabling for you as well.