#customrecordingco

[customrecordingco]

I started on a new project tonight. I found a couple Ampex 350 machines for sale somewhat locally. Took the drive out last night to pick them up. They are both pretty dirty. One is in pretty good shape. The other is a little rough around the edges. I have enough spare parts to fully restore both machines back to their former glory. Both came out of a radio station. I decided I would start on the machine in better condition. Took the electronics apart and set them up on the work bench. Before I power anything on, I always go through it with a fine toothed comb. After opening up the bottom plate, I found about 50 old acorns. Who knows how those got in there. A quick blow with air solved that. These machines had also been modified for use with a Stromberg Carlson 85 watt amp to be controlled from the faceplate of the Ampex. That's the holes you see in the front of the faceplate. I removed the power/ volume control and put that back with the amp. Next up, they moved the line term switch to the front as well. I reversed that and reinstalled it in its normal position. It was a tight squeeze but it went in just fine. While inside, I found a wire that was wrapped around it's terminal, but never soldered. Flowing some solder onto the terminal was oddly satisfying. After testing the power supply cable and AC line for shorts, I plugged it into my light bulb limiter and ran that to my variac. Observing current draw, I slowly brought up the voltage. One of the switches was really dirty and put out a nasty pop to the VU needle which caused it to stick in the "max" position. That's ok, because in fixing that it gave me an excuse to open up the VU meter bulb sockets and clean those out. After a little wipe down, both bulbs work without being intermittent like they were before. The record gain is a little noisy, but I was really surprised it passed decent audio right away. I'll do some tube swapping which will most likely solve the noise issues. The playback gain has the normal Ampex hiss but is otherwise noise free. Cleaning out the pots and switches will help too. The next step is to go through everything with some cleaner. The exposed parts are really dirty. The pots and switches will need the typically conditioning with deoxit and maybe a burnishing brush. Once the electronics are perfect, it'll be time to connect them back to the transport to start on that. Stay tuned!

[customrecordingco]

I started on a new project tonight. I found a couple Ampex 350 machines for sale somewhat locally. Took the drive out last night to pick them up. They are both pretty dirty. One is in pretty good shape. The other is a little rough around the edges. I have enough spare parts to fully restore both machines back to their former glory. Both came out of a radio station. I decided I would start on the machine in better condition. Took the electronics apart and set them up on the work bench. Before I power anything on, I always go through it with a fine toothed comb. After opening up the bottom plate, I found about 50 old acorns. Who knows how those got in there. A quick blow with air solved that. These machines had also been modified for use with a Stromberg Carlson 85 watt amp to be controlled from the faceplate of the Ampex. That's the holes you see in the front of the faceplate. I removed the power/ volume control and put that back with the amp. Next up, they moved the line term switch to the front as well. I reversed that and reinstalled it in its normal position. It was a tight squeeze but it went in just fine. While inside, I found a wire that was wrapped around it's terminal, but never soldered. Flowing some solder onto the terminal was oddly satisfying. After testing the power supply cable and AC line for shorts, I plugged it into my light bulb limiter and ran that to my variac. Observing current draw, I slowly brought up the voltage. One of the switches was really dirty and put out a nasty pop to the VU needle which caused it to stick in the "max" position. That's ok, because in fixing that it gave me an excuse to open up the VU meter bulb sockets and clean those out. After a little wipe down, both bulbs work without being intermittent like they were before. The record gain is a little noisy, but I was really surprised it passed decent audio right away. I'll do some tube swapping which will most likely solve the noise issues. The playback gain has the normal Ampex hiss but is otherwise noise free. Cleaning out the pots and switches will help too. The next step is to go through everything with some cleaner. The exposed parts are really dirty. The pots and switches will need the typically conditioning with deoxit and maybe a burnishing brush. Once the electronics are perfect, it'll be time to connect them back to the transport to start on that. Stay tuned!

[customrecordingco]

Restoration is moving on! Last night I had just enough time to remove the second terminal block. This second block was wired in series with the first one. The terminations ran out of the back of the console off this second block. I don't really know why it was there. The only thing I can think of was maybe it was there to designate incoming/ outgoing lines from another control room/ studio...? I don't know. Either way, it's gone now. It's looking more and more like it should. I was all set to order the capacitors today... and then I found out that my credit card was compromised and the bank canceled it. I should have the new one early next week. Frustrating! This will delay me a couple weeks. I need to scan my computer for the manual for the power supply. I was certain I had one, but I can't find it now. Once I find it, I can start planning the cable looms for the power supply to console. I have some left over 16 pair from our 2" tape machine install that will be perfect for the audio i/o. I may put it all on an elco instead of having a tail sticking out. We'll see... I may not have any time to work on the console today. And I'm leaving for the weekend. It may be a few days until I can give any more updates.

[customrecordingco]

Time for another update! Things are moving along pretty slow. I'm trying to maintain an eye for detail while keeping time to research and learn about this circuit as I go. The past couple days have been spent cleaning up the grime in the wiring. I got a new can of Deoxit and put it to good use on the mechanical switches. My wife just bought me a new toothbrush, so I snagged the old one for cleaning up the terminal strips and cabling. I used warm water and dish soap again like I did with the floor of the chassis. I can't believe how well these terminal strips cleaned up! They look brand new. When all of that was clean, I began the process of re-terminating all of the loose connections. I re flowed the solder on the bottom of the strips as a preventative measure. There are many modifications that don't follow the schematic. There are several pairs that are floating without terminations and even some pairs that appear to be terminated in the wrong place. It's going to take a lot of patience and time to re wire this to stock specs. The first step to rewiring is to make sure I know what's there in the first place. With my multi meter I established continuity between the free floating pairs and their ends terminated on the terminal strip. Then they are marked with a tag (in this case, blue painters tape). Once I know their number against the terminal strip, I can cross reference those numbers against the schematic. Every termination on the schematic is numbered to coincide against the terminal strip. Well, that's it for now. Slow and steady!

[customrecordingco]

Not a whole lot of "technical" stuff to report yet. On Sunday, I finished cleaning up the chassis. All that's left is some rust... And I'm ok with that.. The lid was COVERED with baked on tobacco smoke. If you go back to my original post, you can see the black stains on the lid. The "hot" spot stains sit directly over tubes. I used Scrubbing Bubbles to clean this up. Look at that tar dripping off! You can see I'm making great progress on the lid. I'm afraid to get to close to the original model/ serial label. I'll scrub around that with a tooth brush in the next few days. I've also started cleaning up the wiring. I've removed a couple modifications, and there's still more to go. I have the day off tomorrow. I'm hoping I'll be able to tackle the wiring harness. I'm planning on taking apart what I can, cleaning of the dirt/dust/tobacco, and then bringing it all back together again with cable ties. It's all tied together with old school waxed string. I hate to cut it, but this stuff needs to be cleaned and gone through. Every point needs to be tested for continuity. Luckily, the terminal blocks are numbered - as is the schematic. So it'll be easy to go through, just time consuming. The RCA engineers were brilliant.