When anything is designed, it is the best at what can done given time, price and other constraints we are bound by. And things work. So what if they work BUT you want/need them to be better. This is when I get my thinking cap on, soldering iron out and do a little research. Now, some of this is dead simple, if you know how to solder. If you don’t you can always take it to someone who can solder. Either way it can be done. So this is what I have. This shows the mixer before I got started. A nice 8×2 Board. Great EQ and very clean. Runs off 6 c cells.
The first thing that got done (from Audio Services Toronto) was 8 direct outs pre EQ, pre Fader. This enabled me the future option of feeding an 8 track digital recorder that was in my not so near future. It also enabled me to feed my SoundDevices 744T 4 track recorder some Direct Outs as well. So this was good.
Now as work got me into different situations I noticed that the light on meters in the mixer were too dim They didn’t allow me to operate in weak to moderate light without compensating for where my external light source was coming from (ie I don’t always have the luxury of AC when I need it). Plus they took a fair bit of juice to operate. So I took out the single filament bulb (12v) and put in 2 small LED’s.
So here is before (the regular light) >>>>>>>>>>>
and with two LEDS . 
You can easily see the needles glow even in regular light. The interesting thing is how easy this little mod was. No holes to drill just get the parts and solder them together. The only tricky part was that the LEDs threw off so much light that I had to cover them with heat shrink -without heat shrink it made it look like things were on, when in fact they were not. With that all done I was able to view the meters in total darkness and read a manual if I wanted!
Next on the lis
t was to replace the Direct/Return switch along with the talk back and slate mic switches. I found that they got dirty and noisy quickly. I replaced them once already and having to replace them a second time wasn’t my idea of fun. The first time I did replace them, the traces on the circuit board stripped off. So I had to lay down new trace wires – a real dogs breakfast. One thing is for certain though – you destroy the old switches in taking them out. Got some miniature DPDT switches and placed them where they needed to be by soldering on some lead wires. They fit quite nicely and work well. Replacing them takes about the same effort BUT the advantage is that the switches are more common and you don’t have to touch the printed circuit board if they have to be replaced.
With fine detail work a good soldering station is worth its weight in gold. Magnifying glass or in my case goggles are the best way to ensure your work is not bridging connections. And lastly tweezers with heat shrink on them to help place wires in small tight places. The heat shrink helps to dissipate heat so when you are placing the wire it doesn’t melt.
NEXT…
A whole host of things. I found that all the extra boxes that I had attached to the mixer made it difficult to pull out and quite time consuming to re and re or change batteries.
These boxes did the following: made monitoring two decks possible without plugging or replugging headphones in and out of the decks or mixer, Record -pause of the HHB, the CL-1 from SoundDevices made plugging a keyboard in and remote record possible, being able to monitor via a speaker in between (to give ones ears a rest). So I figured that it could all go inside the Mixer without too much of a hassle.
Coming soon… how I fit it all into the mixer.