The Ghost of the EMT 140

And just like that, we have only a month until the 2011 deadline for the studio to open. I can't believe that I have already had my space for a month! Although it has flown by, I have got so much done there compared to what I would have done at home. There is something to be said for some isolation from the rest of the world when you are trying to get something finished.
I didn't get a lot done this weekend as I drove to Montreal on Saturday to check out a piece of equipment. We are catching up with the console quickly, so I am going to spread console posts out a bit in the hopes that, when we get to the end of it on the blog, the 903A will be complete. This means that we will have a fun post today.

Last week, I was working on the EMT 140 trying to repair the amplifier. I had a fuse blow on me a couple of weeks ago and suspected that something might be wrong with it. What I came to find was that there was actually nothing fatally wrong at all! Just a weak fuse! After finding a suitable replacement (it is a weird radial fuse), I found that the plate still wasn't working. I started to probe around, and this happened:

Excuse my lack of enthusiasm. I thought it was awesome, but I was really, really exhausted.

I guess that the probe for my meter is the correct length to pick up a radio station. Since I was probing on the driving circuit, the radio signal was being driven into the plate which made it sound so creepy.
I ended up finding that a wire had broken (this is the second broken one I have found). After a quick solder job, she was working fine!
Tomorrow I'm going to be tensioning the plate. I'm not really sure how that's going to go... so wish me luck! I'm not sure if I'll post multiple tensionings of the plate (as I'm under a bit of a time crunch) but I will definitely post a before and after-tensioning clip.
Have a great week!

Studer 903A Restoration: Faders

I am averaging under 5 hours of sleep this week and 5.5 hours over the past month. Up for work at 7:30AM... then straight to the studio until 2AM... rinse and repeat. I don't think I have ever worked so hard at something before. It feels really good, but I am starting to crash.
Anyway, here's a little status update on the studio. I was hoping to be done for the end of the month... guess what? Not going to happen. Luckily, I left a month buffer for myself as I've been telling everyone to expect an opening in the new year. Even so, I'm getting a little nervous. I haven't mentioned this before, but I'm considering adding a large piece of equipment to the studio and I'm getting a bit concerned about running out of time. Since this weekend, I've been focusing on finishing the wiring. Mike is still working on fixing the patchbays to come out to the TASCAM dsub pinout and I am soldering xlrs, tuchel connectors, and fiddling with the console. As soon as I'm finished the console wiring, I'm going to spend a day or so getting the EMT140 finished and then it's console fixing time. Not really sure how I'm going to show you guys my console troubleshooting... maybe I'll have to vlog.

Well I promised faders today and faders there shall be. Excuse the lack of explanation. I've got to get out of here and back to work!

Wiring Weekend - Summary

Well it is 1am on Sunday night. If you haven't figured it out already, I do these posts late at night and post them in the mornings. Well, today was a heck of a day! I needed to grab a warm milk before I even got to the computer tonight. For the record, I hate when warm milk gets a skin on it. It's so gross. I need to find a nice girl who likes warm-milk skin. Not sure why I'm typing this, though. I'm pretty sure that the only female that reads my blog is my mother. Oh well.
So, like I said, today was a big wiring day. I finally got all of the parts and cable that I needed and threw 'Ian's Family/friends Autumn Wiring Party'. We spent the entire day stripping, heatshrinking, and crimping new db25 connectors onto 8 channel snakes. I have to say, it went REALLY well. Due to some very detailed planning by yours truly over a few months, we had all of the information that we needed to get it done efficiently. It doesn't sound like much, but we finished the dsubs for ~36 8 channel cables (6 patchbays worth)! I got about 5 cables completely done by sneaking in some extra time to do some XLR soldering. I expect to be completely done in 2 days.
I really appreciate the help, everyone! A big thanks to Tara, Savannah, Ken, Mum, Dad, and Mike. Everyone seemed exhausted at the end of the day and I don't blame them. I think that they saved me weeks of work today and have kept me on track to have the studio operational in ~2 weeks.
I am exhausted and need some sleep. Here are some pictures from today.