119
by n-eight_Archive
Snagged a broken dbx 161 on reverb for $150. It's basically the same as the famous 160 VU, but with unbalanced I/O. Even uses the same PCB. I was hoping that the meter worked so I could drop it in my 165A that has a broken meter, but the meter was DOA. Pretty common with these things (hence the broken one on my 165A), and replacements and/or rebuilds are way too expensive to make sense.It's missing the top and bottom panels, so I'm going to salvage some from a dbx 122 that I got for $30. Should be a drop-in replacement. It did come with the rack ears though.It was intermittently compressing signals, depending on where I flexed the PCB. I traced it down to the RMS detector module (that silver box with the 208 sticker), so I had to remove it from the PCB, remove the shielding can and reflow most of the solder points on its internal PCB. Dropped it back in and it worked. Replaced all the electrolytic capacitors for good measure, and ran through the calibration procedure.