Home Forums Software and Equipment Gear Necromancy

Viewing 19 reply threads
  • Author
    Posts
    • #35170
      Byron
      Participant

      My Line 6 pedalboard going south along with a general round of decluttering/ repairing or replacing stuff around the house has gotten me resurrecting some of my old stuff.

      First up is my 1993 Marshall 8080 Valvestate combo. It had developed a problem where the volume would drop out periodically. Not an unheard of issue with these amps and there are numerous potential causes. Also the tone stack barely worked and the reverb quit as well. The pot for the effect loop is frozen, too.

      Trying the easy stuff first, I pulled the chassis & sprayed out all the pots and jacks with Deoxit contact cleaner. The stuff is pretty expensive, but everyone swears by it.

      After putting it back together, the Amp worked! No dropouts & the tone controls work now. Now, I gotta see about the reverb tank & the effects loop.

      Dang picture won’t upload!

      • This topic was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by Byron.
    • #35174
      superblonde
      Keymaster

      Thats very interesting about deoxit $$$.

      deoxit

      The alternative could be to use its main ingredient or similar, if you have it on hand. (the 2nd ingredient is just to make it have propulsion out of the can I suppose) The remaining part of the recipe which is the ‘secret formula’ could be mostly mineral oil. I’ve been using food grade mineral oil for a lot of things recently with good results instead of various fancy (and $$) spray products, they’re made up of mostly variations of mineral oil anyway (like PB blaster). I picked food grade mineral oil vs normal, simply because it’s just as common as generic and since I’ll probably end up with some of it on myself when applying it, might as well use the safer version of it, either way a bottle of it could be a decades worth of supply.

      Usually on pots I just use rubbing alcohol and lots of turning, but rubbing alcohol does leave a little residue so it isnt perfect.

      I'm an intermediate student of Metal Method. I play seitannic heavy metal. All Kale Seitan! ♯ ♮ ♭ ø ° Δ ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬
      And on the Seventh Day, Mustaine said: ∇ ⨯ E = - ∂B / ∂t ; and there was Thrash; and it had a ♭3; and it was good.

      Attachments:
      1. deoxit.jpg

    • #35191
      Byron
      Participant

      I’m not really sure that it’s worth trying to save $15 – $20 by using some homebrew concoction that may or may not work.

      I certainly would not use mineral oil on electronics!

    • #35225
      grondak
      Participant

      Here’s the appropriate section from Tun-O-Wash, which is what I’ve been using 44 years. The organics in this are generally lower molecular weight than mineral oil’s but has the same propulsion gas. Eh. Either one’ll do ya.

      Screen-Shot-2019-06-12-at-6.14.04-PM

      Metal Method is helping me across the board!

      Attachments:
      1. Screen-Shot-2019-06-12-at-6.14.04-PM.png

      • #35231
        superblonde
        Keymaster

        Hmmm so basically you could use everclear instead of that stuff. (everclear is 92.4% ethanol)

        I'm an intermediate student of Metal Method. I play seitannic heavy metal. All Kale Seitan! ♯ ♮ ♭ ø ° Δ ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬
        And on the Seventh Day, Mustaine said: ∇ ⨯ E = - ∂B / ∂t ; and there was Thrash; and it had a ♭3; and it was good.

      • #35235
        grondak
        Participant

        Ethanol is a great solvent. I’ve been around the “chemically purified” alcohol. A Polish coworker of mine (from the 80s, so this was Iron Curtain time) would pour that stuff in his Cokes or coffees. “It won’t hurt you- I’m still here, see?”

        Metal Method is helping me across the board!

    • #35227
      grondak
      Participant

      Also, based on the petroleum naptha description (virgin light naptha), the two could be the same, with the assay on Tun-O-Wash more explicit than Deoxit’s.

      Metal Method is helping me across the board!

    • #35229
      superblonde
      Keymaster

      R-152a, please apologize to the ozone layer okay

      107079074_cfc_emissions_640-nc

      I'm an intermediate student of Metal Method. I play seitannic heavy metal. All Kale Seitan! ♯ ♮ ♭ ø ° Δ ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬
      And on the Seventh Day, Mustaine said: ∇ ⨯ E = - ∂B / ∂t ; and there was Thrash; and it had a ♭3; and it was good.

      Attachments:
      1. 107079074_cfc_emissions_640-nc.png

    • #35234
      grondak
      Participant

      “I am Jack’s RF-152a.”

      Metal Method is helping me across the board!

    • #35372
      Byron
      Participant

      Next up, is my 1985 Marshall Lead 12. This is the first amp I ever owned. Didn’t much care for the sound of it, but I kept hanging on to it for some reason. Worked fine, just had some scratchy pots.

      More Deoxit fixed her right up and now that I kinda know what I’m doing with those tone controls I can get a fairly decent tone out of it. It is no 1959 Super Lead or JCM800, but it’s not bad.

    • #35403
      Byron
      Participant

      Here are the pics:

      Resized_IMG_20190609_110108

      Resized_IMG_20190609_212914

      Resized_IMG_20190609_105827

      Attachments:
      1. Marshall Valvestate 8080

      2. Deoxit

      3. Marshall Lead 12

    • #35592
      Byron
      Participant

      My next resurrection is this:

      Resized_IMG_20190609_105200

      An Ibanez FL9 flanger reissue. When I would hook it up & turn it on, the led would flash weakly one time. On a hunch, I opened it up & sprayed the switch with Deoxit and it came back to life!

      Attachments:
      1. Resized_IMG_20190609_105200.jpeg

    • #35633
      Byron
      Participant

      OK. I thought I’d demo some of this stuff.

      Please excuse the terrible playing. I really should have rehearsed what I was gonna play instead of just pulling something out of my … that I halfway know.

      Bonus points if you can guess what the first four songs are that I play bits of through each amp.

    • #35636
      superblonde
      Keymaster

      I got Born Under a Bad Sign but the rest I’m blanking on.

      I'm an intermediate student of Metal Method. I play seitannic heavy metal. All Kale Seitan! ♯ ♮ ♭ ø ° Δ ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬
      And on the Seventh Day, Mustaine said: ∇ ⨯ E = - ∂B / ∂t ; and there was Thrash; and it had a ♭3; and it was good.

    • #35679
      Byron
      Participant

      Nobody else?

      OK:

      1) “Kicked in the Teeth Again”

      2) “Born Under a Bad Sign”

      3) “Broken”

      4) “Painkiller”

      I was being clever when I picked these because the titles all go with what’s going on with me & my arthritis. Yes, I have a very dark sense of humor.

    • #35680
      superblonde
      Keymaster

      gah, so close. i went thru several priest songs trying to place that one because I knew it sounded like priest. tooo obvious lol

      I'm an intermediate student of Metal Method. I play seitannic heavy metal. All Kale Seitan! ♯ ♮ ♭ ø ° Δ ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬
      And on the Seventh Day, Mustaine said: ∇ ⨯ E = - ∂B / ∂t ; and there was Thrash; and it had a ♭3; and it was good.

    • #35728
      Byron
      Participant

      That was all the small-time stuff. Now I’m moving on to a bigger project. Deoxit ain’t gonna fix this one. This is an amp I have had in storage for a long time that wasn’t working at all. Wouldn’t even turn on. I replaced the power cord which was bad and then I had power. There was a faint glow from the tubes but no sound at all. Not even a hiss or hum.

      More troubleshooting and I found a bad output transformer. I ordered a replacement & put it in yesterday. I just tacked the wires in place for testing purposes & let it warm up while I held my breath & got a guitar cord. When I heard the familiar crackle, I plugged a guitar in.

      The signal is really weak and fizzy, but it’s there!

      I know I have to replace all the tubes and electrolytic capacitors anyway, so that’s my next step. I’m hoping that takes care of the rest.

      Transformer

      I blacked out the faceplate b/c this is a teaser; I won’t reveal what this amp is until I am finished.

      • This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by Byron.
      Attachments:
      1. Output Transformer

    • #39903
      Byron
      Participant

      Resurrecting this old thread.

      Life (and finances) happened and I stalled out on my projects.

      I was thinking about getting a keyboard controller with larger than miniature keys to replace the little M-audio one I have. As I was comparing different ones and trying to figure out what I wanted, I said to myself “wait a minute….”

      signal-2021-06-23-134105

      I bought this Korg X3 brand new way back when. It was the first thing I used for bass and drums along with a four track Portastudio back in the dark ages. It had been sitting up for years and years since I moved on to better and better options.

      One trip to Guitar Center for a couple of MIDI cables, one Amazon order for a sliding shelf for the qwerty keyboard and a good bit of judicious rearranging later, I was playing my VSTis with full size keys.

      Attachments:
      1. signal-2021-06-23-134105.jpg

    • #39910
      rorygfan
      Participant

      I have a 90’s Tech 21 sans amp with dirty pots. Bought contact cleaner and crossing my fingers spraying from the top of shafts hoping capillary action would draw in enough to clean scratchy pots. Nope. The unit is not constructed for easy removal, all leads from each pot need to be de-soldered from board to expose the holes in pots, afaik and can see. Tone isn’t that great as my other multi effects, so it goes back to the coffin. Maybe soaking the entire thing in a solution might fix it, lol.

      I have been browsing various classifieds for keyboards mostly are Casios though. I wouldn’t mind a Roland, Yamaha, Alesis. So what types Vsti sounds are you loading into it?

      • #39915
        Byron
        Participant

        VSTis don’t get loaded into the keyboard: they get loaded into your DAW or a standalone VST host and the keyboard gets used as a controller.

        Having said that, I have a whole bunch of stuff from SampleTank to some Orchestral stuff to a virtual warehouse full of vintage synths.I even have 1st class soundfonts of all the original E-mu Proteus modules (why is another story).

        If you’re wanting a keyboard, unless you specifically want an actual hardware synth for some nostalgic retro reason, you are probably better off with a controller and VSTis.

        For the SansAmp, I would try something premium (and expensive) like Deoxit and make several attempts

        • This reply was modified 2 years, 9 months ago by Byron.
        • This reply was modified 2 years, 9 months ago by Byron.
    • #39911
      Byron
      Participant

      Of course, it didn’t take long before I wanted to start exploring the sounds on the keyboard itself. I have the original disks laying around and I dug them up. No dice “DRIVE NOT READY.” Oh well, the factory sounds are still there.

      This is a common issue on these old synths. Very often, the drive belt breaks. So I ordered one up. While I was in there, I also replaced the 25+ year old internal battery.

      Then, like a dumba**, I performed a factory reset. I say that because rather than restoring the factory presets, on this machine the reset wipes it. And because I put a disk in the drive and saw – yeah, you guessed it – “DRIVE NOT READY.”

      I took the keyboard back apart and found the drive belt still in place. Dang! There’s something else wrong with the drive.

    • #39912
      Byron
      Participant

      Major bummer. So now I had basically a controller keyboard with 200 instances of “init. program” in memory. And a GM sound bank.

      Scouring the web, I found no way of loading Korg’s PCG files without a floppy drive. But I finally did find the factory sounds in sysex format.

      I tried to send a Sysex dump to the X3 from my DAW and it was a no-go. The keyboard would only take about half of Bank A. Most of the rest appeared to be scrambled – random & missing characters in the patch names and the last few patches and all of Bank B remain in the initialized state.

      I got the same – perhaps worse – results from MIDI OX, which is supposed to be the shizzle for such things.

      Finally, at someone else’s suggestion I tried Bome Send SX and it worked like a charm! First time go.

      I started the process, went to get a refill on my coffee and when I came back it was done.

      All the tweaking in MIDI OX didn’t accomplish squat, even when I slowed the transmission down so much that it took all day. ALL DAY!

      Ah! Back in business! I still need to get a replacement drive – or a floppy emulator – to load some of the other disks.

      In the meantime, I have been exploring the factory sounds. I had all but forgotten there is some really good stuff in there.

      The X3 was a descendant of the venerable M1 and so sounds very similar. It was never very popular, however. Partly because it lacks the very famous “M1 piano” that you’ve heard 1,000,000 times.

      • This reply was modified 2 years, 9 months ago by Byron.
    • #40896
      Byron
      Participant

      Here it is!

      3years later this thing is finally back in business. Besides life getting in the way, I had to enlist professional help for this one.

      1979-Marshall-2204

      My 1979 Marshall 50 watt JMP MK II Master Lead. This is the same circuit as the early JCM 800.

      • This reply was modified 1 year, 4 months ago by Byron.
      • This reply was modified 1 year, 4 months ago by Byron.
      Attachments:
      1. 1979 Marshall 50 watt JMP MK II Master Lead

Viewing 19 reply threads
  • You must be logged in to reply to this topic.