After Harrison Audio LLC received my 2 slaves and master Nubus cards they repaired the 2 slaves and posted them back via FEDEX priority with a suggestion to insure them for a replacement value of $10,000. This figure they state on the invoice as replacement value – not to be confused with actual value which is subject to a customs charge.
I received an email from FEDEX to say that the package was being held by UK customs who require £1700 + vat duty. They based this on the stated replacement value on the invoice.

Here is the important bit – DO NOT SEND THESE ITEMS OVER WITH A FRIEND TO SAVE MONEY!! You need to show a record of sending the item out of the UK otherwise they think you could be importing them and you will have to pay this huge fee. Keep a record of the postage trail. Video the items not working if you can, post on youtube to share the link to prove this is genuine.
After finding all the proof (luckily) I argued that they should only charge a % for the value of the service not the replacement value. I was ready to put up a fight when my original package suddenly appeared stating ‘Customs cleared.’ There was no charge. You can imagine my relief..Hope this helps someone.

Coupling caps  (33uf) are Elna SILMIC II which are the best sounding i could find that were reasonably priced ( i tried Panasonic FM, and Nichicon KZ MUZE series which are also very good)  all other caps here are Panasonic FM series because bang for the buck they are very good.

I have some channels i’ve done with WIMA bypass caps on the electrolytics so the highs can pass through more easily through the smaller value film caps that are in parrellel with the much larger electrolytic caps ( 220 uf and 470 uf values) . The bypass caps are the little red ones on the back side of the board. There was just enough room on the back side of the PC board for the WIMA film caps. The sonic result is exactly what i wanted. Much punchier and faster transients. For overheads and vocals ( and horns) there is no comparison to the stock channels ( even after they are fully re-capped)

These are much more open sounding. But still has that analog air when compared to straight digital.

My goal was simple in concept, i needed a higher fidelity EQ and channel, and was actually looking for an outboard EQ for this….but as we all know the recall ability of the S12  is of paramount importance to work flow, so i thought ”why not modify some S12 channels to a good outboard EQ’s specifications?”.

Easier said/thought  then done!

Now I have what i want. Killer fidelity, recall-ability with no compromise. It took a lot of research on which caps to bypass, a lot of trial and error of finding the caps that sound the best and took some time to pull off but in the end it is worth it. Also i have changed out many of the 5532 and mc33078 chips to the excellent LME49720 chips with great results, again by actually trying and testing them in different parts of the circuit to find were they are best used. I have tried many other IC’s in the channels as well ( AD8599, TI1612, TI1642 ), but found the IC’s are not the big problem in the S12 to get the best performance.

I am set up right now to make more of these channels ( i’ve done over 24 channels of them myself, not all with the WIMA film bypass caps though) so if anyone is interested i can Modify your channels for you.

If you would like to hear the difference between the original channels and my modified channels you can send me a file or two and i can pump your files ( maybe overheads or vocals ) and match your exact EQ settings and and send you back an original channel vs the mod channel files so you can hear it for yourself! I have lynx aurora 16 convertors BTW for reference. I also have some S12 channels for sale which i can sell in guaranteed working original condition, or : Fully recapped, Fully recapped with Eq mod or the , Fully recapped, EQ mod and Film Bypass caps on all main electrolytic caps. I have very reasonable prices. Contact me if you are interested.

Thanks all!

Shawn Sullivan

After some investigation by a S12 tech newbie (me) I finally found something. Under the eq/aux panel I found four vertical cards attached to a bigger, also vertical, card. On one of the four smaller cards, on the failing channel, I found a red sensor light that was lit up all the time. The same lights on the other cards only lit up when moving faders. Swapped card with another channel and problem moved with the card.

Just ordered a new card, called Fader amp card, hopefully arriving next week. Will post again when installed. Cheers!/Paul

Edit: Those hand written crosses on the red connectors ‘could’ indicate earlier problem on this refurbished part, don’t you agree?! Glad to have it out of the way…

http://www.mediafire.com/?6tr4s9uf2t46u

This Mod requires no changes to power supplies and is very easy to perform. I ordered the 8 pin dip package version of the Burson audio Dual op amp. The replacement chips are actually discrete little pc boards (and not chips at all) and use matched  transistors and 1% resistors.

The people at Burson have an amazing product here and have gone way above the call of duty each time i’ve interacted with them/I’m very impressed by their customer support.

http://bursonaudio.com/DIY_HD_Opamp.htm

You can literally just pull out the 5532 chips in your Summing cards and plug these into the existing chip socket (noting the little notch out on the chip socket and just putting it in the same way…. Incredibly easy) . Since the sockets are laying vertically however they have a tendency of wanting to let gravity have its way and want to just fall out of the sockets. I didnt like the idea of a socket going into another socket sonically either, So i opted to unsolder and remove the original chip sockets from the summing card and simply solder the (much nicer milled socket) burson Op amps directly onto the pc bord. Problem solved. Whole console sounds better. and we can brag about our discreet modded output of our console.

Incredibly affordable, great sound, super easy to do. Had to share it with you guys. Also note… i doubled the capacitance value of the original caps ( 220 uf to 470uf) and added a very high quality 1 uf poly film cap on top of each cap ( >400 Volts per microsec which is 40 times faster than a fast audio chip!) that allows the highs to pass through a little cleaner. The caps did make an additional difference for the better and was more of a pain in the butt to do then the swapping the chips.

Make sure you have a good solder sucker and a really small tip, temperature controlled soldering iron handy for this job. Or just call a good tech like Gwyen who does if you are uncomfortable with this.

Next project (which Jo is involved with as well) is getting a custom 16 channel passive discreet summing box finished with remote controlled (custom motorized 5 gang pot) parallel master buss. My wallet shivers everytime i think about it LOL.

With love and respect for my S12 brothers!

Shawn

if you can say “check” to the two requirements above: then you are ready for EXTREME CLEANING , CLEANING ,CLEANING , CLEANING (please imagine a 5 second fade out on “cleaning”)!

Obsessive compulsive way to clean 4 channel modules.

1With both hands grab and pinch up the scribble strip (you may use a plastic putty knife to get it started then use your fingers the rest of the way) It has cotton felt material so it doesn’t scrape metal to metal. There are no screws holding the scribble strip in place.

Work your way across the scribble strip gradually pulling up each section across the console, it will bend a little but don’t over do it. Lift scribble strip out of the console.

2Using needle nose pliers ( i like the longer ones) grasp each of the little  buttons (or button covers i guess would be a technically more accurate description)  lightly with just enough force to hold it and without twisting,  pull straight up and they come out easily.

I do not remove or mess with the “Mute” and “Solo” buttons as i haven’t encountered any problems with them as of yet. You can remove the little buttons with your fingers also but i do not recommend that.

3Remove all metallized fader knobs by wiggling your thumb and forefinger underneath until it pops off the metal fader/slider.

4Remove the top and bottom larger screws that hold the four channel module onto the control surface.

5Put an old t shirt of a band that went #1 in Costa Rica that you tracked on vacation (or any t-shirt)  next to the module you are about to take out. Flip the module over to your left with the bottom facing up, you will notice there are three ribbons on the top and two on the bottom. disconnect them by pressing on the little black handles that raises the connecter out. Kind of a no Brainer, just remember where the ribbon connectors go back in.

6Disconnect the fader connectors, note that top connecter is the right fader, bottom is the left and you wont get confused and make sure you are firmly gripping the PCB board with your fingers on your left hand as you you rock the connecter back and forth gently (but firmly .) with your right.

Do not create any undue stress or twisting on the PCB board.

7Flipping the module back over, on a soft surface or your lap, remove the two screws that hold each fader in place, taking care that they don’t fall or get damaged. heres what you have now.

8Remove all other screws on top of module. Note the top three screws are flush mount (flat), the others are all round head (only two types of screws).

You can now liberally remove all remaining mounting screws while having the module placed in your lap or on a soft surface, this will naturally support the electronics below as the screws release their grip on the PCB board.

Important… once ALL the screws are out , check that all the little lights and buttons come out straight without bending or displacing them, its easy… just be careful while you do this.

(it’s your baby…. of course you’ll be careful)

9Get your “Zero residue contact cleaner” ready… you know…the one labeled EXTREME DANGER!

Adjust the spray can to the lowest setting (low) if it has one…  it still sprays with quite a bit of force. Placing the straw directly into the crevice of the switch I blast the spray for less than a second and then use the same straw to immediately depress the switch vigorously.  If you keep a little bend on the straw as you quickly activate the switch over and over again it becomes a very easy and quick method.  I used to use a pencil eraser to do this (the small ones on the end of a regular pencil)  but the contact cleaner evaporates so quickly there is no real time to change tools. I use my left hand and a little flexing of the straw to press down on the switches. As you clean you will feel the switch get tighter feeling and will have a snapper click sound to it. Sometimes it takes a couple little blasts of cleaner from a few different angles to get the dirty little switches clean while working the product in there.

10The faders need  blasts of Zero residue contact cleaner as well along the shiny chrome/polished metal rails (don’t forget to do both sides of each fader rail)  and into the bushings that ride on the rails. Work the fader back and forth at differing sections of the fader to work grime and grit (ok…. hopefully theres no grit in there) out as you do short blasts of cleaner.  I have some faders that are more smooth than others even after cleaning, i believe this is “normal”

A Lazy Tech (who was fired) Way to clean 4 channel modules.

1Remove scribble strip as described above (complaining how things used to be better in the 80′s/90′s et……)

2With needle nose pliers remove the small button covers. then blast Zero residue contact cleaner into (really its mostly on top the buttons doing it this way but some will trickle down to the switch) the switch, use the same straw to immediately depress the buttons vigorously.

3Shoot the contact cleaner into the very small hole on top of the fader dust guard and hope that makes all you problems disappear!

Thats it!

Shawn Sullivan

Hugh Iverson
Account Executive

Chicago Tech, Inc. / www.chicagotech.com
4043 N. Ravenswood Ave.
Chicago, IL  60613
800-442-4011 Ext. 6011
773-687-6011 Direct
312-948-9486 Fax
hiverson@chicagotech.com

They only have 1,100 of these chips left…. so hurry ! LOLz  two or four of these will probably last you two lifetimes. They are around $7 each for these (because they are hard to find). These Chips are robust and seldom fail, or so the story goes. Never hurts to be ready for seldom.

Also i had Harrison replace two chips in one of my peri-proc  boards ( model # SN75176BP ) that brought my serial from not working…to working. Harrison did the repair for a really reasonable sum as well…Kudos and thanks to Brian Cox @ Harrison.

I did the same replacement on all my other cards and they were repaired as well. the chips are located @ u47 and u48 on the peripheral processor boards. there are ten identical chips in the same section. Might as well replace them all since they are $.60 (thats 60 cents)  each. Heres where you get those.

http://search.digikey.com/us/en/products/SN75176BP/296-1739-5-ND/277385

I had a ground fault in my mains power that fried the chips. Good ones to know about.

I had been switching my console on by individually switching each power supply “on” which was getting vary annoying as well. And then I’d have to go to a sub breaker box and turn it on and off to stop Harrison’s “fans on forever” mode from happening. That is, even when the power supplies are switched off…. the fans keep running.

So ….I made a power distribution box with solid state relays which have “zero switching” AC. that is, they switch on when the AC is in its zero position of the alternating wave after it receives a little DC control voltage (3-32 volts DC) . So no spark or surge when switching on.

You can use a little flip switch, or any kind of switch to control sending the dc current to the SSR (solid state relay+ I have the + side of the dc control voltage ( I used a 12 volt supply i had lying around) going to a thermal switch, which is just a fancy thermostat (got it for $25 bucks on ebay) which is set to be a normally closed connection or “NC”  in normal operation. When the temperature rises above whatever temperature I set as a threshold (I have it set to 82 degrees F for now) then the connection becomes normally open or “NO” in “alarm mode”.

You can literally have an alarm go off as well if the the temperature is exceeded.

Basically now I have thermal protection, and one large AC cable instead of 7-8 AC cables (cut down about 40ft of AC cables!!).  I have routed the single large AC cable forward away from all the audio connections to the floor in front of the racks. A safe way of turning on everything related to the console with no sparking, arching and having to turn on individual racks. Zero crossing ac switching that is basically impossible with a regular relay or by switching everything with all the amperage present on a large mechanical switch. I also wired up a AC feed to a switched outlet for the Mac IIVX computer and Geffen extender box (sends video and ADB/keyboard/mouse of the Mac IIvx up to 500 ft over CAT5 cable)  so it also gets switch power via the SSR.

Thats it!

All this was done for about $145 U.S.D. worth of parts. Which just for the thermal control alone would’ve been worth it. Relays are $25 each … i could’ve used only one but opted to use a separate phase for the control surface and computer related things and kept all audio related stuff on its own phase.

Shawn

We have experienced very strange behaviours on our beloved S12 recently.

We sometimes had no input from channel 1 to channel 16 right from the powering up of the console. Some other times the sound was entering the channels, but not exiting them (no routing was working). Some other times it was the total opposite: sound was present even when the channels were muted!

Everything was pretty much unpreddictable, by the way…

As it was only on the first channel carrier (ch1 to 16), I checked the processor card of that carrier, and then every channel card.

I found that, on channel 16′s assignment board, one condenser was not good looking (it had leaked).

So I replaced the whole assignment board with a spare one, and that seems to have solved the problem.

BUT, as the problem was very unpredictable, I’m not yet sure that it is definitely solved. We’ll see in use if it stays OK!

EDIT Feb. 2018 : this wasn’t the solution to the problem, as it happened again after changing the assignment board. I eventually found the culprit several years later (!), while doing some cleaning :

After I had removed every channel cards and the brain card from the ch1-16 carrier, I noticed that the backplane (the big card on the bottom of the carrier, with the connectors which the channels plug into) was not tightly secured on the rack chassis, as a number of screws had gotten loose. So I tightened them all correctly and thought “wait a minute, some of those screws are used to bond the backplane’s ground to the chassis, so maybe this is the source of the problem ?”.

And bingo, after I had put every cards back in place, I started the console, and no problem with ch1 to 16. This was last year (2017), and the problem hasn’t happened a single time since !

What was happening was that depending on how bad the connection to the digital ground was, sometimes the serial data was not received correctly by the brain card (it needs this ground as a reference), and the corresponding channels would not start correctly. I also understand now why sometimes just pulling some cards out and then pushing them back in would temporarily solve the problem : it was just pushing the backplane on the chassis and re-bonding the digital ground for a while !

So here it is guys : if you’re control panel acts weirdly on startup, check those backplane screws !

Hope this helps…
Maikol

The touchscreen freezes, mostly while entering a slate for a channel. It becomes nonreactive to touch, and the mac says “Graphic slave has not responded, please save your work and restart”

A few seconds later it says “Autocard has not responded for 30 seconds”.
At the same time the racks are not displaying what they display normally, it’s as if they were disconnected.The only way to get it working again is to reload the code from the mac, or restart the mac itself.But the problem happens again quite immediately after reload if I try to enter a slate!!!

Pretty annoying! Has anyone ever experienced this?

EDIT : problem solved!
JUST TRASH THE “SLATE” FILE IN THE GLW FOLDER!!!

That “slate” file stores all the suggestion the touchscreen gives you when you are typing a channel’s slate on it, so this can get pretty big afters years of using the console. Until a point where it slows down so much the console that the computer thinks the touchscreen has crashed!