Why You Shouldn't Buy Vintage Equipment on eBay 

The latest from Paypal: They will refund 9% of my purchase price if I return the mixer to the seller. Of course he would then sell it back to another buyer on Ebay as a working mixer. I must ask all to be careful with any dealings with Ebay or Paypal. We now go out of our way not to deal with them on all but the smallest of transactions realizing there is no recourse when dealing with Paypal or Ebay.

Hi James. So sorry to see you experienced problems with your ebay purchase and with the seller. Unfortunately this happens from time to time. Firstly, don't give in and don't get goaded into anything less than a full refund if you end up returning the mixer. If the item has been misrepresented you are entitled to a full refund. However don't despair, your mixer isn't beyond economical repair in the hands of a competent technician experienced in repairing this gear. Now just a bit of technical advice. Please, please, please do not spray any more CRC into the sliding faders, rotary potentiomenters or switches. Contrary to popular misconception this doesn't fix the problem. Yes, it appears in some instances to remedy the problem temporarily but it actually creates more problems than it fixes in the medium to long term :( I only recommend and use DeoxIT F5 Fader spray be used in faders and rotary potentiometers. It's not a permanent fix but infinitely better than any CRC product. Ultimately a proper restoration would involve replacing those slider faders as they were never designed to last forever and they would be the parts that had the most mechanical operations in practical use. Of course nearly if not all the electrolytic capacitors would most likely need to be replaced. Why? Because they have a limited working life, typically anywhere between 1000 to 10,000 hours depending on what part of the circuit they are in and of course the quality of the component. Remember this mixer is at least 25 years old. Message me if you decide to keep the mixer and want it restored to it's former glory. These portable mixers were not cheap in their day and deserve the love and TLC of a tech highly experienced in vintage studio gear repair and restoration. Please don't let any old hack bugger this up.

Hi James. I have been an eBay customer for the past well, since 1999 so 21 years. They used to be pretty good. If you had a concern, you used to be able to call them and get a live representative in 5 minutes or less. Now, everything is via email and slow as molasses in January.. You can't get any customer service from them at all. I have given up on eBay as their percentage on sales -- that is, their take -- has really gotten out of line.. I have a 100% user rating at 799 positives. No negatives. But, now, I'm through with them. They are cutting their own throats as now, they are Their Own Worst Enemy. Sorry you had to learn this the hard way. Andy (radiorex)

Interestingly this is still listed on the Reverb site and is marked as "in full working order ". My brother worked for the BBC Radio in those glory days and he and most of the other engineers were apparently fanatical about sound quality. They were constantly designing and looking to improve every aspect of sound. I understand that the DJs were a crazy lot even then.

James, contact some radio stations in your area and speak to some of their engineers. If you can find an old school radio engineer, they can likely get it running. Its amazing what they can do. You need to find a more experienced one who worked in radio prior to the digital age…someone who worked in radio in the 90’s for example. They are around and are very talented. They would likely enjoy the challenge too.

plus, there's the extremely great chance (well over 100%) that if you returned it, the mixer will be relisted, either on eBay, amazon, etsy, or some other site

I suggest using actual fader lube when applicable, the regular CRC can be rather 'dry' while also removing pre-existing lubrication, resulting in a change to the feel of pots and faders, may also increase carbon track wear. Depends on the materials though, vintage all metal components are less picky and probably really need a full cleaning first rather than a combination cleaner+lube.

I love your videos. You're very funny. You give great and in-depth explanations about keyboards that someone would only notice after they buy it, lol. It's also great to get a chance to sample the keyboard at a music store to even get a better feel of it, but review videos are also great because yo miss a lot of things that you don't see when you're at the music store. If by any chance you can remember Chopin's Impromptu Fantasie, could you play some of it on your future videos? Thanks. Keep up the great videos!

I wonder if Big Clive could reverse engineer this kind of product, they aren't bad at figuring out how electronics are built.

Very interesting...usually you don't get the level of detail on the item. I once had a vintage computer a ti99/4a if that makes a difference...it was sold as working but didn't...I sent it off for repair...got it back 9 months later...by then I had bought a new old stock unit in it's original box and it worked great.

It's interesting that it has an ex BBC sticker and a Central Television sticker. Central Television is an independent TV station in the Midlands (UK), a competitor to the BBC! I'm wondering how that mixer found its way from the BBC to Central. I'd keep it and treat it as a challenge and see if you can restore it. 👍

Try to contact Paul Carlson of Mr Carlson's Lab (his youtube channel), i bet he could fix this. Maybe even do a collab with him.

Right now I'm trying to purchase a specific piece of gear from the early 2000s and I'm on the 3rd purchase. Both of the first orders got cancelled by the sellers for the same reasons and after looking at the feedback on the third one I'm starting to think they are all the same person. It's really frustrating and there's no way to contact ebay to report the behaviour.

I know you have some videos on this type of content, but it would be great if you could start making lesson videos or videos with tips for learning and advancing at piano because I think you have an amazing background in piano and your personality is great for teaching

You should review the donner dep 20 and the alesis recital pro. They’re both budget digital hammer action pianos. It would be great because you’d be one of the first to review those pianos and I’m sure you’d get a lot of views also it’d help out with a lot of people deciding wether they want to buy it

It might be expensive but a review of the ROLI seaboard 88 grand would be super cool.

Question, is the roland frp 1 basically just a roland fp10 but bundled?

Yea I learned long ago about Ebay, I do still use them basically to buy cheap nessessities that can hardly go wrong usually direct from China for cheap, (rubber bands, sewing needles etc). But anything that is high cost or with a moderate likelyhood of being broken I steer away from.

It will be much easier to repair with schematics. Maybe put the feelers out to some of the UK audio repair shops. Ask if they have access to the schematics that you can pass on to your US repair shop??

A very interesting, and as usual from you, honest, video. Thank you for that, companies like the vendor, eBay and Pay Pal wouldn't understand that. it seems. I think the word you were looking for to describe what these people are not is, "transparent". All smoke and mirrors, (aka "Deceitful") Good luck with the mixer. I hope you get it working well, you deserve that.

The real problem in restoring this mixer will be the pots and sliders. For instance ganged pots .. often used in left/right channel gain settings .. are almost unobtainiam. The only ones I have found are used in guitars. Most caps and resistors are easy to buy and replace because they are still being produced. The exceptions are multisection caps typically used in the power supply sections, but they can be replaced by singles. Also, if the mixer uses any custom integrated circuits and they are bad .. such as my Hammond organ .. good luck in finding them. As mentioned by others, spraying pots is at best a temporary fix. Really good pots are sealed and getting to the resistance element in the pot typically requires removing the cover. In order to make the sliding or turning of a pot smooth, manufacturers coat the resistance element with a lubricant which over time hardens which causes the metal finger(s) that contact(s) it to ride over the hardened coating and not make contact. I just restored a bunch of 1990's home intercoms and wound up removing all the pots, taking off the pot covers, and cleaning the resistance element with cleaner to get rid of the hardened lubricant. Just looking at the number of pots and sliders in that mixer I really good restoration by someone competent to do it would be quite expensive. Wow, that was discouraging! Maybe in your spare time you should learn how to repair pots! ;)

It might not be worth it to you, and you've probably already thought of this or had it suggested but... you may want to try and locate a repair shop in Britain or ex-Audix employees, possibly though the help of your community, and see if they are willing to receive and restore the mixer. Obviously, you would have to ship it there and have it shipped back. Although I have no experience with Audix equipment, I own a few pieces of Neve rackmount pieces and I (and generally everyone else) adore them.

I'd love to see you do a video like the $100 piano but with organs.

James, you might want to try Facebook Marketplace if you want to sell or buy something. I know it can be regional most of the time. That's the plus and minus of their platform. I have some success finding items on their, even though I have not found a Roland C-190 or C-200 classic organ yet. Also, I was wondering if you would do a review on the Nord C2D combo organ. I would be interested in your opinion. All the music stores in my area don't have them on stock.

Good for you....bravo.

I stopped using eBay and PayPal years ago. I see nothing has changed.

I’m assuming that, as it was formerly owned by the BBC only the left channel works 😀

James, appreciate the video! Can you answer this question: How can Rousseau (pianist) and at least 5 connected channels (in Rousseau's list of channels) not have copyright strikes considering they are often doing recent music......??? Any idea??

To me this sounds like it been a "machine to save all other machines", and this is the first mixer of them at a place with a major problem so it ends up on a shelf, then the next mixer have a problem and you go to this one and take a sparepart but you not it's an expensive piece of equipment so you save the broken part on it because "who knows one day someone comes and fixes it" and it goes on, you bad many before and now several of those "sparepart machines because the same parts break on others, and one day someone somewhere else needs a sparepart they can't find so you sell them this because the part they needed wasn't one of the broken parts so they get the part they needed, and so on, this can be a machine that served the other mixer they had with spareparts, and Joe day a shady dubious person gets the hand in it and sees the prices the good ones are worth and sees a "opportunity" and doesn't hesitate to hustle people with it, maybe even using the same mixer several times. It happens with other stuff, even crashed cars get out on export here on Europe to some shady dealers that then register them mayby on another chassit number and build them on parts that should be used only once in a car but never more after a ar accident or serious crash, but still they export this dangerous cars like they never been in the accident even Reading the belts and other stuff.

I still use ebay for the convenience but had a bad experience a few years back. I sold an instrument and the buyer paid so I dispatched. He then somehow got Paypal to flip the money back to his account. He strung me along for ages with one BS excuse after another but I never got the money.

Hi James, I am sure Terry at D-Lab Electronics could fix this for you, worth an ask as you have seen him recently with your Guitar Amp?

marcusfuller on RU-vid seems to be quite knowledgeable in the field of electronics in conjunction to music.

My favorite is when it turns up in one wrapping of cardboard, smashed to pieces and stinking of cigs

Maybe try pro audio europe , based in London and probably most likely to know about it.

Once, only once I bought something on eBay and that was a huge mistake. So, no I don’t buy something there. No way. And the only thing I can think of to get a part of your money back is keep that thing until they pay. Or ask your creditcard to refund... don’t know if you payed by creditcard. About the mixer. They are difficult to repair. Really difficult. The way they are build up internally isn’t straight forward at all but maybe d-lab now something to do with it? Hope so because it is a nice thing and they sounded great. IF they worked at all. Succes and thank you for sharing.

Paul Carlson of Mr Carlson's Lab on RU-vid might be a potential collaboration partner on this. Ooops, I should have read further. Mr. Carlson's Lab has already been recommended several times.

Repairs: ‘Mr Carlson’s Lab’ on RU-vid

What about the guys that repaired that old guitar amp for you some weeks ago? Sure he'd be able to repair this mixer.

Audix is a microphones company. Vizit Thoman site. Audix is an activ company in 2020 .

That mixer sure is nice looking; too bad that it was only nice on the outside.

I haven't used ebay in a long time. I will not be using them again. I've had the same issues as you.

A question about the dimensions of an item, I think, is pretty commonly done as part of a scam. Often the questioner has no idea (and doesn't care) what the item actually is.

Hi, if you intend to sell it, I'm interested to buy it as is . But you better fix it. It is a nice piece of gear.

I bought a vintage synth off ebay. Sent it down to an experienced tech. Hoooooo boy that was an expensive venture.

Can't you request a "not as described" chargeback on your creditcard?

I have had better luck with vintage cameras from reputable dealers on Ebay. I always send them to a camera repair shop to clean, lubricate and adjust (CLA) them just as a matter of practice. Since they don't have electronics, repair is pretty straight forward. I never buy anything from people that feign ignorance about a camera's condition.

There's a bunch of people on youtube posting videos on electronics repairs, so I'm sure there's several people out there who could fix this thing (and make a video about it =)

Vintage equipment need to have a recap as the older electrolytic capacitors can leak or just dry out and become good resistors as they age. Mixers have a lot of electrolytic capacitors in them.

Mr carlsons lab, channel on RU-vid. He would absolutely be able to help you

I think a you could try to contact Mr Carlson's Lab

Why can’t you call your credit card and request a chargeback??? Your credit card will reverse the charge. Your credit card company is on your side. I have done this when PayPal transactions go south.

And that's why I never purchase expensive stuff on eBay.

Just a thought, but try contacting Matt Syson. Apparently he worked at Audix from about 1978-81 then at Calrec from 1981-84 as a test and installation engineer. He has a website at www.matt.syson.zen.co.uk. Maybe he could recommend someone in the US, or perhaps fix it for you?

Maybe you could contact the 8-bit keys guy, he's quite impressive in repair and restoratation of vintage hardware: ru-vid.com

Sometimes you just need to cut your losses . . . your vintage amp guy able to fix it? giving the cheap pianos away to a school, or someone who needs one is a good idea, Pax.

Try Reverb.

Very beautiful and very cool and very nice and thank you 😍😍😍😍😍😍

Standing back and looking at the whole picture it appears the seller and the buyer are at odds. While eBay and PayPal have become involved, they are mostly bystanders. Neither of them promised you a pleasant journey in the world of buying sight unseen from a person unknown. Having purchased around 1K items over the years on eBay, I have had my share of "bad experiences", but I find the vast majority have been resolved by PayPal or eBay, rather than making them worse. (Try disputing either a cash or credit card purchase with your bank sometime. None that I am aware of have a refund policy even close to PayPal.) Having said that, the evidence you gave points to the seller not keeping their word more than anything. When you factor in time, you are just wasting it. You are likely not old enough to remember the caveat at the end of every commercial of old: "allow 4-6 weeks for delivery". That is a month and a half. In this "I want it by 8:00 tonight" world, we assume everything is Amazon Prime. Sorry, it isn't. So, in the final analysis, you have made the correct move not to use eBay or PayPal anymore as they probably have your name in some list of "people who have spoken of us badly in public" and might not treat you as well (although I don't really believe this). As for the equipment, as you said, wait but don't wait. If the money should come, you can send it back. If it doesn't there is no reason you shouldn't look into repairing it. With all the interest in vintage equipment these days, it is very likely someone will be able to fix it, even if they have to do part "workarounds". I am sorry for your bad experience James, but having had many that make this look like a walk in the park, I can say this: "Welcome to life on the planet Earth". It may not be pleasant at times, but it's all we got." I'll be praying for you.

Why not sell trough Reverb instead ?

If you buy vintage electronics. Be prepared for the worst case. May need to be recapped, noisy transistors etc. No support and documentation means no sale. Research as much as possible, and know that you should never buy what you can't afford to lose. Ebay usually is pretty good. But some scammers out there make the experience very poor. Contact Soundsmith in New York. They maybe a good source. The local repair shop in Nashville maybe a source too. The shop on Nolensville Pike. He might know something or someone. Good luck.

Sell it to me if you can’t fix it ;)

Try contacting the guy who owns the Mr. Carlson's Lab channel. I forget his first name. He's in British Columbia and has done all kinds of repair and restoration of obscure electronics. He'd probably love to bring this back to life and would make a really interesting video about it. Most of his work is for his own (extensive) collection, but I know he does repair work for other people for a fee.