^ almost an x-post w/ how we jam econo

I'll let Mr. Jury or any of the rest of the aluminati pile on about this but I did a lot of heat shielding in the sauna w/ larger industrial baking sheets from a restaurant supply. Weirdly much, much cheaper than a blank for a smaller size at a big box hardware

I need to open my Midas Venice 32 and do some serious cleaning.

It works great for the most part and I calibrate to fader 0 with a DAW tone w/o much trouble, but there’s the odd issue with a few channels.

Master fader: the right channel cuts out at certain points going up or down, I have to carefully nudge the slider to get it back in stereo

The bus faders are kind of shitty, similar to what’s going on w/ the master fader to where you nudge some and its fixed

Channel 13 works on one speaker only - I forget which

Channel 11 fader scratchy when moved

Channel 15, some kind of shit like channel 13, I don’t remember

The bus and master inserts seem to kind of suck.

I thought it was worse than it was until I learned about the tweeter hiss on my JBLs, but I can works around its quirks for the most part.

There are a bunch of guys doing disassembly like this on youtube:


I think I can hang w/ that as long as I don’t have to do any soldering.

Any tips? Can you recommend stuff to clean the faders and whatever else? Not even sure what sort of cleaning supplies I need for something like this other than compressed air or something.

llllllllllllllllllll wrote: Tue May 28, 2024 7:15 pm I need to open my Midas Venice 32 and do some serious cleaning.

It works great for the most part and I calibrate to fader 0 with a DAW tone w/o much trouble, but there’s the odd issue with a few channels.

Master fader: the right channel cuts out at certain points going up or down, I have to carefully nudge the slider to get it back in stereo

The bus faders are kind of shitty, similar to what’s going on w/ the master fader to where you nudge some and its fixed

Channel 13 works on one speaker only - I forget which

Channel 11 fader scratchy when moved

Channel 15, some kind of shit like channel 13, I don’t remember

The bus and master inserts seem to kind of suck.

I thought it was worse than it was until I learned about the tweeter hiss on my JBLs, but I can works around its quirks for the most part.

There are a bunch of guys doing disassembly like this on youtube:


I think I can hang w/ that as long as I don’t have to do any soldering.

Any tips? Can you recommend stuff to clean the faders and whatever else? Not even sure what sort of cleaning supplies I need for something like this other than compressed air or something.

I opened and recapped / cleaned my Allen Heath mixer a couple of years ago. I use DeOxit F5 on anything that is a fader or pot, and 99% rubbing alcohol or regular electronics cleaner for everything else like switches, jacks and stuff like that. If I had a Midas like that I would consider moving all the phantom switches to the face of the console cause that has always bothered me, but that is a chore. If you are having problems with channels only going to one side, I suggest cleaning the buss switches and pan pots. I used a bunch of ziplock bags and a sharpie to keep all the screws and nuts and washers and knobs and etc separated and labeled. That helps a ton because taking apart a board is a long process and its easy to lose loose things. Dont be afraid to solder things. There are a lot of fun jumper changes on the Allen Heath that made it more appropriate for my use and I bet the Midas has similar mods. Not sure how modular the channels on the Midas are, but the AH is totally modular so It made it pretty easy to deal with after I took off a thousand knobs and nuts around pots... that takes forever. Have fun.

GK MB500:



Arrived with no output. ICEPower module tested OK. GK sent me the schematics within a matter of minutes after I emailed them. I found that the +15 V rail was measuring less than 1 V. R9 was measuring a few hundred kohm instead of 10 ohm, so I replaced it. Fix'd.


Peavey MiniMEGA:



Again, no output. Second one of these I've worked on. Peavey sent me the schematics previously. One of the class D output stages wasn't actually switching. I replaced the two Class D driver ICs (U102 + U202) and the four MOSFETs (Q10, Q11, Q20, Q21) as I was getting some weird readings, but that still didn't fix it. I found that U102 was only seeing a few hundred mV on pin 1. C124 was shorted, reading about 40 ohms. Replaced it. Fix'd.


VHT D-Fifty:



Second one of these I worked on. Powered on, but no output. Found that the main filter capacitors were loose, but not completely detached. They're kinda in a pile on top of each other, and supposed to be glued together. Whatever glue they used didn't adhere to the capacitor plastic coating, so it was useless. Looks like it took a hit during shipping, as the choke and output transformers were also loose and their mounting ears were kinda bent. I straightened everything up, tightened down the mounting screws, which were barely hand-tight, and used some loctite on the nuts. Glued the caps in place with silicone. The HT fuse, which is mounted internally, was blown due to one of the cap leads shorting to the PCB mounting screw. Fix'd. Sold it locally today.

when I powered up my home studio yesterday the main fuse blew. it took me a moment to realize that it was the power supply of my PC that was causing it.
so I removed the power supply and opened it up. looked like on of the el caps failed.
didn't want to try to replace that. so I went to town and to my surprise digitech had a new power supply in stock.
installed that, fired up the PC and it went directly into BIOS mode. could not detect my 2 hard drives. reopened the PC, checked all the cables, nothing. looks like I somehow fried my hard drives! goddamnit!!!
at some point I would have to switch to Windows 11 anyway BUT NOT RIGHT NOW!

at least all my data is saved to 2 external drives.

bassdriver wrote: Sun Jun 09, 2024 7:11 am when I powered up my home studio yesterday the main fuse blew. it took me a moment to realize that it was the power supply of my PC that was causing it.
so I removed the power supply and opened it up. looked like on of the el caps failed.
didn't want to try to replace that. so I went to town and to my surprise digitech had a new power supply in stock.
installed that, fired up the PC and it went directly into BIOS mode. could not detect my 2 hard drives. reopened the PC, checked all the cables, nothing. looks like I somehow fried my hard drives! goddamnit!!!
at some point I would have to switch to Windows 11 anyway BUT NOT RIGHT NOW!

at least all my data is saved to 2 external drives.

This happened to me once. Same thing. Popped supply... Bios Loop... no hard drive found.
Try popping those drives into another computer or a external drive host usb thingy. It is possible there has been damage to your motherboard from the power supply issue and maybe it just isn't seeing the drives. One of my drives was fine in the end, but one lost its index. I had to scrape data off it with some weird application that let me see what as on it, but with no file structure or naming.... just long strings of hex code. through 2 weeks of trial and error I was able to pull about 80% of the files of the lost stuff that wasn't backed up off and we were able to finish a record without having to re-record every bit of it. Better than nothing. This is one reason I am an advocate for all backup/data dump drives to be real spinning hard drives. They are much much much more recoverable than ssd.

Kniferide wrote: Mon Jun 10, 2024 11:03 am

bassdriver wrote: Sun Jun 09, 2024 7:11 am when I powered up my home studio yesterday the main fuse blew. it took me a moment to realize that it was the power supply of my PC that was causing it.
so I removed the power supply and opened it up. looked like on of the el caps failed.
didn't want to try to replace that. so I went to town and to my surprise digitech had a new power supply in stock.
installed that, fired up the PC and it went directly into BIOS mode. could not detect my 2 hard drives. reopened the PC, checked all the cables, nothing. looks like I somehow fried my hard drives! goddamnit!!!
at some point I would have to switch to Windows 11 anyway BUT NOT RIGHT NOW!

at least all my data is saved to 2 external drives.

This happened to me once. Same thing. Popped supply... Bios Loop... no hard drive found.
Try popping those drives into another computer or a external drive host usb thingy. It is possible there has been damage to your motherboard from the power supply issue and maybe it just isn't seeing the drives. One of my drives was fine in the end, but one lost its index. I had to scrape data off it with some weird application that let me see what as on it, but with no file structure or naming.... just long strings of hex code. through 2 weeks of trial and error I was able to pull about 80% of the files of the lost stuff that wasn't backed up off and we were able to finish a record without having to re-record every bit of it. Better than nothing. This is one reason I am an advocate for all backup/data dump drives to be real spinning hard drives. They are much much much more recoverable than ssd.

cheers J! I will check with another PC if my drives still work. Luckily all my stuff is saved to an external hard drive!
After being really pissed off for 24 hours I decided to simply order a new PC. More RAM, faster and bigger hard drives. That’s a little over 1000 bucks. If I’d bring the old one to a tech I would easily pay a couple of 100 bucks and I would probably wait 2 weeks.
I figured that my weekends are quite boring when my music machine is down ;-(

bassdriver wrote: Tue Jun 11, 2024 11:01 am

Kniferide wrote: Mon Jun 10, 2024 11:03 am

bassdriver wrote: Sun Jun 09, 2024 7:11 am when I powered up my home studio yesterday the main fuse blew. it took me a moment to realize that it was the power supply of my PC that was causing it.
so I removed the power supply and opened it up. looked like on of the el caps failed.
didn't want to try to replace that. so I went to town and to my surprise digitech had a new power supply in stock.
installed that, fired up the PC and it went directly into BIOS mode. could not detect my 2 hard drives. reopened the PC, checked all the cables, nothing. looks like I somehow fried my hard drives! goddamnit!!!
at some point I would have to switch to Windows 11 anyway BUT NOT RIGHT NOW!

at least all my data is saved to 2 external drives.

This happened to me once. Same thing. Popped supply... Bios Loop... no hard drive found.
Try popping those drives into another computer or a external drive host usb thingy. It is possible there has been damage to your motherboard from the power supply issue and maybe it just isn't seeing the drives. One of my drives was fine in the end, but one lost its index. I had to scrape data off it with some weird application that let me see what as on it, but with no file structure or naming.... just long strings of hex code. through 2 weeks of trial and error I was able to pull about 80% of the files of the lost stuff that wasn't backed up off and we were able to finish a record without having to re-record every bit of it. Better than nothing. This is one reason I am an advocate for all backup/data dump drives to be real spinning hard drives. They are much much much more recoverable than ssd.

After being really pissed off for 24 hours I decided to simply order a new PC.

This was my exact solution as well.

My laptop is on the way out too. At this stage, would pretty much any modern laptop be able to hang with Reaper and a live band and such? Everything goes through a mixer and outboard for me, so the computer pretty much only records, edits, and plays back. I only use plugins for test tones and inserts, though it’s possible there could be 16-something 96/24 tracks going at once… usually not just a stereo file going in and out until the very end.

Will PAIA electronics ever survive?