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Post by christopher on Jul 19, 2022 17:47:37 GMT -6
Ok, I need to get on this. This year is shot musically, my new job is part time, I think it’s time. I’m hoping by posting this thread it will motivate me to tackle it. I figure if I use this to organize my thoughts I might make progress and have a working vintage beast someday. I plan to edit this first post as I go along, if things go well, and maybe it can help others in their tape adventure. 1) I need to clear out the garage and ESPECIALLY prepare my workspace to be constantly interrupted by family. Bikes, scooters, basketballs, groceries, goodwill crap, dump run crap. I need to be able to drop what I’m doing, come back and pick up where I left off. I’ve started on this, but I really need to be able to track what I’m doing. I will have to log and document everything I guess as I go. 2) rebuild power supply and motor caps. I have parts for this, a couple spare power supplies and transistor sets to choose from. 3) control cards. There are a bunch of them, they need to be cleaned up, new capacitors and rebuilt. My capstan card is a custom job that allows 3 speeds! 7.5/15/30. Never seen that in others, not sure what to do. I only ever used it in 15/30 before I put it in storage. 4) custom breakout box with relays: my machine traces back to Octopus Audio, which I found online was a department at Manta Sound. This custom box allowed to switch quickly between 16 and 24 stacks by using pushbuttons. Also it had an XLR input to stripe SMPTE onto channel 16 or 24. I’m undecided whether I go stock or keep it this way and rebuild. I have both 16 and 24 head stacks finally. 5) motors /pinch roller. Capstan and reel motors spin fine, I do have an extra set of each. There are replacement bearing kits online I’m considering. Capstan could use the re-surfacing service that’s available online. I had THE only proper Swiss oil but I may need more if I can’t find where I put it. The pinch roller is glossy, I may reach out to Terry’s Rollers..(anyone have experience?) 6) audio channels. I’m probably going to do partial recap for filters/power and leave most of the audio stock. 7) auto locator. It used to turn on but was always funky, I’m pretty sure it needed new lithium cells? or whatever it is in there they used to store short term data. Kinda scary but then again not the end of the world. 8) connectors everywhere, molex and more. It would be cool to replace with gold molex. I’ll think about it. But I do need to track down any intermittent anything. That’s the main stuff. the following are dream ideas: * I want this to live in the garage while I work upstairs. It would be cool to have video camera looking at the deck, and remote Control. I’ll have to think about this, could be tricky. Arming channels might be the really tough part. * a part of me wants to create new PCBs with pick and place parts, especially for the transport card area. Those old cards had multi-turn pots on them that are old and dirty and need to be replaced anyway. Also the connector printed “fingers” are pretty scratched up. I’d love to have gold. I feel like this is where pick and place excels: reliability, with excellent connections. That’s my impression though, so who knows until years later ** extra crazy dream idea: if I could somehow get control from my local network, I bet I could figure out a way to control it over the internet. Then I could use it from anywhere, with video feed. And also I guess anyone else could too. UPDATE: Got my garage arranged to get started Decided on a Walmart table setup to keep kids out. one of my parts decks. .. my narrow body in background  ****Some inspirational pics**** John, Paul, and George all recorded on Studer 80.. DSOTM and the Wall too, at least according to videos I’ve seen and things I’ve read. Paul with A80 mk1    The Hit Factory’s a80 Mk2 machines     I have a hit factory headstack (with identifying markings I won’t take pics of) and likely from a machine in these pics, & mentioned on their 353 wiki page. The narrow machine is also a 24track, as you can see by John’s elbow in one of the pics. The Dave Spindell pic shows the wide body cal covers only off on 1-16, so it might be using it in that pic..   |
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Post by sean on Jul 19, 2022 21:56:43 GMT -6
Fun enough I have a Studer A80 2" 24 track in my laundry room. Good luck!
I got on Instagram during the pandemic as a means of motivation to fix some synths and my Auditronics consoles. Documenting progress and getting positive feedback along the way has value for sure!
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Post by christopher on Jul 20, 2022 21:03:49 GMT -6
Thanks! Yeah I’m getting excited about this again.
It blows me away that the technology from back then is still such a PIA to do correctly. It’s gonna be a massive challenge for sure. It’s easy for me to see a late a827 see where they made changes to the original a80. It’s still a similar lineage. Computers and SMT helped them bring some changes that hopefully helped with reliability. Of course the decades also brought cleaner approaches.
My thing is, if I’m gonna go through with fixing this machine, I want it to be better than stock. Mine is MK2, the MK4’s had some cool updates that my deck also had done at some point. My goal is to have a deck that will work solidly for decades, and if I ever decide to sell, the next buyer can have a great experience
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Post by christopher on Aug 16, 2022 14:09:50 GMT -6
I got started on cleaning.. first I removed the wide body penthouse. That was super dirty and cleaned up easily. Also spent time cleaning the Fan module. The cables cleaned up greatly, that is a great sign     |
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Post by christopher on Aug 16, 2022 14:55:41 GMT -6
I think I’m gonna build the wide body first. It’s setup to swap between 24 and 16 headstack. Simple push button routing SMPTE to ch24 or 16, or bypass. Also some empty rack space where TLS2000 used to go. I’ll have to think what I can put there
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Post by christopher on Aug 17, 2022 10:59:13 GMT -6
Here’s an extremely rare cool feature on my wide body.. a custom switcher box from Octopus Audio apparently the tech division of Manta Sound- Toronto major studio and North America distributor for Studer. The “remote mode control” from the rear panel is moved to this box, and easy switching for a busy studio.  Looks simple enough. Unfortunately there are no schematics… and this ain’t microprocessor switching lol    I’m probably going to need to trace out all those wires and make a schematic. Or I could just do what I used to do, close it up and hope for the best.. jk. If I have to I’ll bypass it. |
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Post by christopher on Aug 17, 2022 11:23:54 GMT -6
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Post by christopher on Aug 19, 2022 16:05:25 GMT -6
I’ve been scrubbing the lower rear panel, 40-50 years of build up of tape dust and whatever else.
*** wear safety gear, nitrile gloves, mask, look up how to clean a chemical spill ****
A little tape shed during sessions is not a concern to me at all; breathing piled up decades of tape dust vs not, that’s totally different. Don’t just blow it out with a compressed air indoors! Some tape manufacturers used cancerous stuff for some of those years. Not a big deal when it’s glued to plastic, but when it’s piled up in dust, it’s worth wearing gloves and a mask. Also the big PSU caps probably leaked and mixed into the dust, and probably had PCBs in them, even though the manufacturers say they didn’t- I don’t trust manufacturers to know that far back -or admit it if they did. Better to be safe!
**Don’t just take the air compressor and make the dust airborne.
I go back to my lab days..
- wear nitrile gloves, long sleeves.
- face mask
- gently dampen all the dust with a spray bottle of water to make it a muddy soup.
- full roll of paper towels, soak up and immediately to trash bag
- lookup hazardous chem spill cleanup videos. Not trying to scare anyone.
Dead caps I will put in ziplock and box away until I can take the trip to the hazardous waste company. I don’t have many, it should be possible to get them incinerated for not too much money. Resting guilt free at night is worth it to me.
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Post by christopher on Aug 19, 2022 16:33:00 GMT -6
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Post by christopher on Aug 19, 2022 17:03:11 GMT -6
Since I’m committed to Wide 24, I found another great pic of what it will be like.. Le Studio, Canada.. I love those early Rush albums. It’s very dark below the transport but it looks like I see a horizontal line where the synchronizer rack should be, like mine has. www.rush.com/remembering-le-studio/ |
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Post by christopher on Aug 22, 2022 12:48:51 GMT -6
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Post by christopher on Aug 22, 2022 17:20:47 GMT -6
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Post by christopher on Aug 23, 2022 0:03:46 GMT -6
Updated…. here’s what’s inside the channel modules. Tons of parts inside each, transformers, inductors, VU meter etc, dual XLR jacks out on back (for seperate repro/sync out .. early machines had another card, Sync line out. Later like this one shares Repro Line out driver) There are 12 high quality mini pots (multi-turn?)inside the gray Repro/ Sync Calibration cover for example. Enough stuff to make a stereo DIY some sort of device in each channel  far left is the power supply with a chassis-mounted transistor pair and filter caps.. taking power from those massive transformers under the deck.. then the Repro Line out card with 3 x 1000uf caps  below: The furthest left card is the repro line out. Apparently someone says they scoped that transformer and it’s flat +/-1dB out to something like 230kHz+. The EQ and preamp for the Repro head is on the next card. The sync card looks almost exactly the same. The other two cards are the record+Bias cards..  here you can see the a101 opamp. Most in the machine are wrapped in blue.  |
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Post by notneeson on Aug 23, 2022 19:34:44 GMT -6
This is really impressive and awesome, wishing you good luck from the electronics gods on this project!
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Post by jeremygillespie on Aug 24, 2022 10:54:20 GMT -6
Dude..... Respect. Pretty badass what you’re doing here.
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Post by christopher on Aug 24, 2022 16:53:27 GMT -6
Thanks guys! Yeah its pretty overwhelming the amount of stuff going on inside these things. It’s been a lot of fun cleaning it, kind of mindless and feels good - the hardest thing so far was making room in the garage. Lots of planning, sorting, goodwill, dump runs.. Those tables the kids saw and I came home to a neighborhood Lemonade stand, haha.. And then since everyone knew I had tables, someone asked to borrow them last weekend! first plan of attack was to keep studer parts spread across them so people don’t start stacking crap on them or borrow them
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Post by christopher on Aug 25, 2022 9:35:52 GMT -6
The rear of the transport cards’ wire wrap. Also you can see all the head cables, and a new motor cap that needs to be hooked up  Transport cards  got a lot of the dirt cleaned out, starting to look better  |
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Post by christopher on Aug 31, 2022 16:45:54 GMT -6
After a lot of thought and research I put in a big order for electrolytic caps for the transport cards and audio module power supply section for the 24 modules. I know I forgot a few things already. So that will be fun when it arrives. Meanwhile.. I’m thinking about this unique Octopus Audio box. I found a video with a machine that has it. No surprise it’s from Manta Sound. The video is the making of Tears are Not Enough. They cut to the 24 track a few times and it sure feels like I’m looking at my machine. They had many Studer A80’s though. (Most were 1/4” afaik). Here you can see the Octopus Audio switcher under the transport:  The crazy thing, there’s a little hand written label on the headstack, which mine had when I got it. First thing I did was remove it. I had figured it would peel off and I could save it but it didn’t, I had to scrub for hours and days with alcohol, it had sort of became one with the stainless steel. I can still see an extremely faint stain where it was, but I can’t get it to photograph. Who knows, maybe they wrote a note on all the headstacks? From the same video:  Pretty cool.  Well that just makes me want to keep the Ocotpus Audio box working. Looking at the back: it’s the stuff called Veroboard, later called stripboard. I traced out the pins for the sync and autolocator, and it’s basically a giant 50+ pin 1:1 parallel split, with the strip board acting as wires between. Then they cut a hole in the strip, and send some wires to the relay circuit and other places. This is all tech I’ve never touched, I find it interesting:  |
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Post by marconemusic on Jan 1, 2023 8:14:55 GMT -6
Cool project!
Curious. Did you happen to buy that head block from a guy with a shop out in Scarborough ish area?
Looks exactly like the one I was going to buy. A few years ago.
Curious.
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Post by christopher on Jan 3, 2023 19:50:51 GMT -6
You know I’m not sure, might have been? There was a mk1 stack that was for sale for a long time in the same part of US that I just couldn’t pull the trigger. They can be modified to work with mk2, but I wasn’t sure how. Now I know it’s just pinout adjustment .. and if you really needed to, could do some playback card mods to act more like Mk1. And then one day, checked Reverb/eBay… it was gone, and I hated myself. Followed by months of nothing. This one was listed as Mk2 and I immediately jumped on it. When I got it I took the lid off and checked head numbers, indicate yeah a very early mk2. Should be plug and play with my deck, super cool.
When I start thinking about this thing I get all excited again! Man, I just knew life would get in the way, sidetracked by work and holiday season temporary storage clutter invading my work areas.. The finish line is not that far. I just need to get the holiday decorations put away and get my workspace back!
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Post by michaelmichael on Oct 7, 2023 0:38:00 GMT -6
Any update on the A80 rebuild? I've following with alot of interest as I'm also doing the same thing. Got an A80 VU MKIV (24track) that was in storage for decades so your posts have been super helpful!
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Post by christopher on Oct 27, 2023 0:09:54 GMT -6
I hope to get some more progress. I’m so glad I made this post, I sort of forgot how much work I’ve already done! Seeing this makes me excited again.. In my mind it’s still the project that it’s always been, that I’ll someday get to, but as I revisit it’s actually not that far away. This reminded me that I ordered the caps for the cards, and the Autolocator, the parts are here. I went through the boxes and found everything I need. I think that’s where I left off, waiting for parts. So fingers crossed I’ll force this to be complete. Ive also been doing some other smaller fun projects, those have been rewarding and good little hurdles.
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Post by christian17 on May 7, 2024 2:32:02 GMT -6
Hats off to you on this epic rebuild,,, great to see details of the journey too.
I'm in a similar position atm.
I've an A80 u mkiv 16/24.
Which has had work done but everytime I turn it in after months of unused, I heard a small new noise/gremlin, so it's time to do similar,, recap throughout I think.
My next stage would be cap order too.
Can I ask how it's going?
Did you get further from where you left off?
Also there a was a poster, Michaelmichael that had the very same model as mine,,, did you start?
Thx again for the post 👍
Christian
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Post by christopher on May 10, 2024 10:22:46 GMT -6
Welcome!
Yeah they hate sitting. they need a drop of the special oils on the motors every so often. So if you hear a whine or grinding thing, that’s something to consider. Some guys on eBay are super helpful and sell the oil.. the manual says which one. Wrong oil can mess up the sintered bearing on the capstan. You probably already know all this, just good to repeat it for others.
If they sit a while.. be sure to keep them plugged in for a 3-5 days before turning on to prevent the PSU caps from losing charge. I’m not sure that’s true on Studer, but I would do it anyway.
I’d always turn mine on the night before and let it warm up. Then next day after all the parts are warm and fully expanded, that’s when you can tell where the issues really are. If it’s same day it’s probably 4 hours to get there. Calibrating a cold machine is a waste of time, as I’ve learned.
The other thing, you might want to leave it on a few days if possible. I have an MCI 2 track that the ancient caps in the locator start working after a few days of leaving on. But they refuse to work right in the first 36 hours. So weird.
If it’s not blowing fuses, then it’s probably not a difficult thing to troubleshoot. The nice thing about 16/24, you can decide on 16 and use the other 8 channels for spares. Just be very careful and turn off/on when trying things. Troubleshooting while on was how mine started blowing fuses, and they are $4 each around here.
My machine:
When I started on this thread, I had a path of landing a big home with space for a tracking studio, but that looks very far off now. So I kinda look at my small work space/garage/studio/kids room and it’s like a puzzle how to clear an area where I can keep the important parts away from everything and not lose them. That said.. Spring is here, time to clean and try again!
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Post by christian17 on May 11, 2024 7:11:59 GMT -6
Thx alot for v your reply,,, its very refreshing to know lots of people are in a similar journey of bring these awesome machines back to life.
Right now my plan is to recap and I'm hoping something can lead me to a decent parts list,, I know I saw one on this or another site.
Mines an A80 VU MKiv 16/24
Thx again
Christian
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the remote and XLRs are not, I’m not too worried about that. 
