Let's troubleshoot and repair an "ADC Sound Shaper Two IC" audio frequency equalizer together! This is the entire process from beginning to end. Learn about testing components in circuit, and the "Oscillating X."
To learn about electronics in a different and very effective way, check out my Patreon page. Many of my designs are released there as well. Click this Link: www.patreon.com/MrCarlsonsLab
@HalfSpeedMastering -- In this particular case it certainly is same, since the FET in question has a pure and very brief pop-suppression function and is otherwise pretty close to a piece of wire in the signal chain. I would trust Paul 100 percent to avoid degrading or otherwise altering the audio performance of any gear he works on.
Gotta love this old school equipment. Very stylish scientific look to the dials, markings, and solid cabinetry. Reliable circuitry, and easy to work on. 🎛🎚🎚🎚🎚 👌😙
Quick question where did you get you desoldering tool. And or what is the brand name/ what is it called. Thank you for your time and have yourself a grate day. 😁
As an industrial electrician, that spent literally weeks fault finding and eventually repairing a marantz vintage amplifier, as a hobby at home, this was very humbling to watch and follow. Thankyou sir !
Same, I'm an industrial electrician and don't know as much about electronics as I should mainly because my PA system has 10, 15 band eq's and 2, 31 band eq's. Atleast one of them has an issue in rotation.
@@sferg9582 Still have my ~40 year old one, a SS110 Mk. II, that I had given to me back when I was 14. That was in 1991. Just fixed it today, now it works right :)
Wow, freakin' awesome video. My first equalizer was an ADC Sound Shaper Two (with the VU meter) in 1978. Worked great but with three tape decks I eventually wanted a dubbing feature on the EQ. So in 1982 I purchased this model ($213). With bidirectional dubbing, large LED meters, a good subsonic filter (18dB/oct@15hz), THD and IM of 0.02% and great layout of controls I was pleased. My original EQ was given to my brother-in-law and he still uses it today. That's over forty years. My SS2 IC still functions perfectly and is used every time the hifi is on. Not bad for thirty six years old. Some folks just don't understand how useful an equalizer can be. This video is very interesting and a definite keeper. The SS2 IC is an excellent EQ, functional and pleasing to the eye with that "industrial" look. Remember their first EQ?? The ADC 500??? Well worth an hour of my time to view this. Nicely done, sir.
Respected sir, I have seen lots of audio repairs uploads on RU-vid. BUT your upload is top of all those .In my opinion you well described, relaxed,well speech,through, well repaired videos.
Love your channel! You are an incredible tech. I used to calibrate analog aircraft instruments mostly rate of climbs and altimeters and we used to call it technician proximity syndrome. I haven't commented yet but have been binge watching your channel. I am also a ham. 67 yrs old and been a ham for 35 yrs. You have more knowledge about things than most people have forgotten. You and Nicola Tesla would have been the team to change the world. 73 de KB7ICI.
We used to sell and service SoundShaper equaliser back i n The early 70' and this one you repaired is so simpler than the first ones they designed! The had the power supply completely shielded from the rest of the circuitry and used at the first models germanium transistors, but I see their basic or original design hasn't changed to much. Keep videos like these coming , they are a pleasure to watch for a retired old engineer like me! :)
My Soundcraftsmen PE2217 Preamp-Equalizer is due for an overhaul. Time to get my hands in there and have some fun. Sliders have gotten sticky, and some electrolytic caps are on their last leg and thus are affecting the bandwidth at the low end.
What an excellent example and tutorial on the most useful devices for quick repairs! Many thanks Paul, for taking the time going along the schematics with us step by step. You're an awesome teacher!
its funny you might be right. i put on mr carleson to relax and go on adventures into vintage troubleshooting land. youre right. its an awesome quality and i hope he never changes. im gonna subscribe to his patreon i think
So many of your fans have old scopes. One of the most common scopes over the decades was the Tektronix 465B. I think this would be a worthy work horse to go over as a general "what to look out for" and common problems specifically pertaining to this aging scope. I built mine from scraps of others that were beyond ECONOMICAL repair. Nothing is irreparable with your keen skill!
Check the DC restorer diodes going to the grid. Also, check if the Z intensity control input has any effect. After that, ebay for the transformer, or a dead 465b for parts. Check your local tyrannical government electronics redistribution center. I have seen them sell for $20 working!
I would have to agree,you are the man when it comes to the tiny cities of electronics, I like listening to your comical jokes that sometimes not every body get's,cheers to you Mr Carlson's Lab..
So cool to watch you diagnose and repair this graphic equalizer ! You are quite the expert and I thank you for sharing your outstanding skills for others to learn from and enjoy on RU-vid.
I know nothing about electronics, half the stuff you talk about totally confuses me, but it is fascinating watching how you troubleshoot this sort of thing :)
Amen brother. Don't know how many times someone sent in a radio saying xxx was wrong with it and the instant it got set on my bench it started to work again. Having been a heavy truck mechanic also many years ago I speak from experience when I say they suffer from the same problem to.
@@Mariano.Bernacki For me the opposite happens. I test the damn computers for 2-3hours and the next day the client calls me that the thing stopped working.
The effect also happens with desktop support. Arriving at customers desk will sometimes solve the problem. I always used to say I was so good my mere presence solved the problem.
Truck driver to Radio tech: "It's the finals". Truck driver to Mechanic: "It's the EGR". -Former, recovering truck driver turn technician. Other favorites: "No, I bought it brand new! Nobody has ever been in there!(Covered in pry marks, stripped screw heads, missing screws, splatter-box, solder balls rolling around, cut diodes, over-sized caps...). "It just needs caps". (Burnt PCB around through holes, smoked resistors, some weird residue all over, is that a bobby pin? What is that smell? Is...is that urine? How the hell...). "I'll be back Thursday".(11 months later..)
I appreciate you making these videos with a high megapixel camera. That way we can really see what's going on with the circuitry and individual components.
Hi Paul, I am very excited to see your first repair video of the New Year. Nice to see you use the SuperProbe and the 224. I love both very much I have a Mod 222 which I think is very useful, yet not as useful as the SuperProbe I built using your brilliant design. Thanks again for all that you do and sharing your bottomless knowledge, along with your ingenious electronic inventions with us! Take care my friend and please never stop sharing your vast and practical knowledge with the electronics repair community. "Why be a rockstar when you can be a god?" applies to Mr. Carlson's Lab. It's funny, you have the youthful appearance of someone in their late 30's or early 40's and yet you posses 125 years worth of electronics knowledge and experience.
Paul - You did it again. The equalizer has come back to life! I appreciate the enlarged schematic. Many times they are too small to read. This time it was much better. Thanks
I have what is probably a previous version of that very EQ. It is simply called Sound Shaper Two and it has analog/mech level indicators. Aside from some of the switches needing cleaning, I use it to this day and and after around 40 years, I still like it! Glad to see with very little effort, they can be repaired! Thanks!
@@BruceNitroxpro Ha! I would if I could figure out a way to recap my ears! Sadly I can't hear any highs anymore! But along those lines, I do have a couple old Heath Kit amps and pre-amps that I used as a stereo years ago that definitely need recapping. No idea what kind to use though.
I'm not an electronics tech by any stretch of the imagination, but you explain things so well that I was able to follow along without any problems whatsoever. Great presentation and quality I might add.
I had an Apple tech brake tabs off and leave pry bar marks on an Apple IIc computer because he did not know the proper way to open the case. It really got my goat. I love the channel. Keep up the great work. Wish I knew one tenth as much as you about electronics. I learned just enough to get a ham licence. Love the old equipment (boat anchors).
Great job! Once again, making it look all too easy! And once again thinking I need to build that Super Probe. I built a probe(with an actual germanium diode) and it works well, but the idea of a non-contact probe where one can just wave it close to the board and not having to locate and contact an emitter at some absurd angle is blissful. Curve tracer first, though. Op Amps are coming in from Digi-key as we speak. Your Patreon page has been the single best tool on my bench. I have been using your transistor tester, matching, biasing circuit for a while now and it never fails. I just let your videos play while I work and always learn something new, even if I have heard the video a couple of times.
I'd like to know how Paul got so heavily into vintage as his specialty. It's really what sets this channel apart because much of the knowledge he presents is no longer taught and is slowly being lost. And yet, he doesn't come off as some nostalgic curmudgeon but rather he makes everything seem timely and relevant. They say with everything being so digital today, it's often the analog aspects of a circuit that are most half-assed and overlooked. This is where the tricks of the past could serve us well.
At min 24: HP taught that was the "half/split method." I was a technician for 38 years at Raytheon and then an engineer for up to year 50 and it worked for me
Awesome video Mr. Carlson! Really appreciate the time you take to spread your knowledge. Watched the entire video with immense interest. Learn a lot. Looking forward to taking your course very soon. Cheers!
I don't really understand a lot of what he talks about, but I still very much enjoy watching this channel because even if I don't understand most of the things he is doing, I do slowly pick up on things that make sense to me, so I still gain knowledge about how these things work that I didn't have before.
Exemplary details, focus, patience, organization… I admire the thoroughness of this video. Thank you! P.S. I usually trace signal path on schematic with color marker to make it easier to follow as I go back and forth between the unit and the schematic.
Wow, what a treat! There's always something cooking at Mr Carlson's Lab, but today you coincidentally covered the same model of equalizer my dad gave me which has a similar problem! I can't wait to work on it after seeing this video. I like the curve tracer you were using and the Super Probe was pretty cool. Your channel is an inspiration to me, the way you explain things make electronics fun and less daunting to learn. As always, keep posting awesome repair videos :)
Love this video Paul just the way you pursue a problem and solve it is just incredible I have to say this but you are so young but you have acquired so much knowledge and the equipment you have is just wonderful It's always a pleasure to watch you solve a problem and in such detail repair it
Thanks again Paul for another great video and for your Patreon course. I have learned a great deal and have been able to understand how different parts work together.
Thank you for uploading extremely informative videos that inspire, help, motivate, and bring pleasure to people all over, and in a professional, calmly hypnotic manner. You deserve a lot more subs!
We can se that you are a great engineer. Congratulations for that wonderful scenario. People like you make the world a better place. Wish I had 1% of your capabilities. Thank you for your videos.
Paul, I really appreciate your discussion on J-fets and how to test them. Back when I was in electronics school they hadn’t been invented yet, so I had only a rudimentary idea of how they worked. Your clear explanation answered many questions I had. I joined Patreon a few months ago after finding your channel and I have rediscovered my love of electronics again.
Great video, man I have to build the super probe and curve tracer asap. Thanks Mr Carlson. Love your channel and being a patreon is a must! Best money I spend every month
man im so keen on making a carelson super probe now. and a curve tracer. ive been obsessed with clipping & saturation shapes recently and i cant believe i didnt know what a curve tracer was. its such a straight forward bit of gear too, but it tells you so much. and the super probe is genius. non-coupled signal sniffing. what a ripper idea. thanks mate you do an amazing job.
I used to do with cameras what you do with electronics, but had what we called "Japanese Magic" -- if it was going to malfunction, it would do so for me! A very handy talent when you back your work with your word.
Thanks Paul. More invaluable coaching and instruction. I also agree with others in that you should bring the SuperProbe to market either in DIY kit form or finished product.
All thanks and credit to you Paul and 1/2 dozen excellent guys like w2aew, AA5R, Afrotech, Andreas, Andy Davis & a few other subject matter experts, who constantly share your wealth of knowledge and experiences with us.
Thanks Paul! Nice work! That opening shot never gets boring! I am almost ready to start making boards. If I can't find a scope this month for my curve tracer, I will start on a more simple device that I already have most of the components for. Or I might just start making boards and set them aside until later.
I feel as if I've learned more watching your videos than I did during the handful of mandatory EE courses I had to take at uni (I studied SE). Wonderful content.
Absolutely amazing stuff as always, Paul! I've been a patron for a while but haven't gotten around to building the Carlson Super Probe. Having watched this, I just HAVE to build it. Obviously, the time it will save me is a multiple of the time it takes to build it. Thanks so much!
Another wonderful video. Almost root against you solving the problem because that's where it concludes. All of what was presented was fantastic but how much fun and learning it would have been had we made it into the equalizer sections? I don't think anyone could explain it better! Thanks for taking the time to make it I enjoyed every second.
Thank you Mr. Carlson .. This vid just inspired my next fish can project - so named because I have a collection of sardine and the like cans with matching perfboard "covers" that I've been trying to come up with small one and two evening projects in which to utilize them. A curve tracer! No reason that I can't spin off a rudimentary battery powered 4 chip tracer with miniature 5x7 LED matrices (arranged 10 rows, 14 columns) as the display. 3/4 of a quad comparator to generate the probe sine, square it up for a pair of 4017's to do sweep, and level translate the other probe to center an LM3914 vertical input. Should be cute as a button, and the relatively low resolution shouldn't be an issue.
Loved playing with my equalizer when I was young . Usually when tuning it to a song I was playing to make it sound good the song was almost over . Then played the song again at just the right tone . Half the fun was playing with it !
@@devilsoffspring5519not always. I have some older tapes that have poor sound at higher frequencies and things like that, and the equalizer allows me to make the recording sound good again. But year, when I was a 15 year old I loved pushing the sliders around, distorting the sound in horrible ways... But I learned a lot at the same time.
Absolutely amazing troubleshooting Mr Paul. This is the first I saw testing jfets, how great the curve tracer see inside the device. Wow, I really enjoyed. Best of the best video only in this channel👈👏👏👏👍👍
A practical approach to audio or video equipment troubleshooting/repair: I think the determination of a (the) faulty channel could be done much quicker by a simple "audio in and out" setup. With a cheap mp3/music player, a powered speaker (I have one on my bench always ready to rumble) and a set of RCA cables this would take literally 20 seconds. No need to disassemble anything. From there the search could go on. Or you could determine a properly working EQ, with the only defect a faulty VU meter. It IS "audio" so it can be prechecked audibly :-). I recommend also to changes the state of all of the switches and sliders while testing (aka listening to the test sound/music), so a "rotten" switch or bad contact can be traced immediately. And what I missed in your video was a final check of audio. Only after that step, I would do a thumbs up, not before :-)
love that huge mid scoop they have going on on this unit. i have a late 80s 100 band eq/amp thats needing some repairs. each band has leds on the sliders, some have died , and hard to find 12v square type leds, without paying an arm and a leg. it also needs a re-cap which isnt to difficult once you dig into the unit. Thanks for sharing this beast!
I worked at a job troubleshooting printer PCBs years ago. I miss the Huntron Tracker (dual trace curve tracer). Great tool. Very necessary as the manufacters would not release schematics to our company. Info on a lot of the printers was still confidential.
this reminds me of when i fixed a DVR that refused to stay turned on - only had to open it up and reseat the front panel connector and it workes again perfectly :D
Repairman's syndrome is REAL! My grandfather worked for Dictaphone way back in the day. He had been called to a particular piece of equipment 8 times but had never found a problem when testing it. After the ninth call he did something odd...he taped a picture of himself on the underside of the cover. He retired 14 years later...having NEVER been recalled to work on that piece of equipment in all that time.
