Can any of you clever fx folks explain what might be going on here?
I have an an old and much loved Arion SAD1 analog delay which is a lovely sounding thing but has started playing up. If I power it up and plug it in after a long period of not being used, it plays fine and sounds as good as ever. However, after a period of about a minute or so, the delay signal gets distorted and the volume of the delays fades out to nothing. If I unplug it, leave it a few days, then when I plug it in, the process starts again.
So can anyone tell me what is going on here? I suspect something to do with caps but I’m not sure.
Would this be fixable for a reasonable cost? I’d love to get it working again...
Comments
Have you tried with a battery?
I make guitar pedals for a Manufacturer in London and make some pedals on my own time and also fix and mod. If you can't sort it out yourself I could have a look for you. If you feel comfortable with a soldering Iron and a DMM, I could try to assist you.
If it is that it should be very simple and cheap to fix - the only issue will be identifying which one it is, and there shouldn't be too many possibilities. At worst, simply changing all the caps should fix it and might be the best approach anyway given the age of it.
If it's the delay chip it will be more expensive though...
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
I can solder cables and pots etc but haven't really tried a PCB beyond fixing dry joints. I have a copy of the schematic so is this an operation someone can talk me through? I also have a digital muktimeter but am not sure if I can use that to check through the caps and see if they have failed. I opened it up but can't identify any bulging ones.
Maybe it would be better to pass it someone with more experience as I really don't want to mess it up.
Replacing electrolytic caps at 30+ years is good practice anyway, so even if they aren’t all faulty it will do no harm. I would guess there’s a more than 90% chance this will fix it.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Not sure how how useful this will be, but here it is...
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
So I took the plunge and had a go at replacing the caps, which I've never attempted before. I spent Saturday afternoon soldering (as I'm new to this it took ages).
Anyway I finally found a 1uf that seemed bad. I changed it over and got my delays back but they were still distorted so I thought I had better go through and change all the caps.
Rookie mistake.
Now it doesn't work again
Arse biscuits.
I just want to throw the damn thing in the bin now...