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Tuesday, 9 April 2019

dbx 160x Compressor - humming and farting.

The famous George called - he's moving studios and could I be on hand to lift some things into a van.

Yeah - why not?

I'll tell you why not - one of the things was a Hammond organ. It weighed more than a small elephant. Three slightly unfit middle-aged blokes and one very fit middle aged bloke just about managed to lug it onto the van. There was a considerable amount of puffing and blowing and cussing! (blatant plug here for The Above Average Weight Band)

Anyway... George had a few duff things for me to look at too, some headphones, a few leads, and a dbx compressor. "It sort of hums and farts" ...



It's a dbx 160X, still in production today, and considered to be a bit of a classic...











The humming is bound to be a power supply problem, and sure enough one of the smoothing capacitors has a bulged top ....















... and a rotten leg. We'll change all four. The unit also has a rather unpleasant case of "glue rot". The glue has changed from a yellow colour to a dark brown. When this happens the stuff can start to conduct.









It's essential to scrape this off to prevent it eating away at the copper tracks, and causing unexpected operation due to the falling resistance of the glue!










There's some rot under the capacitor. I'm not sure whether this is due to the glue or the leakage of electrolyte...










Either way, it's cleaned up and a small coat of lacquer applied before replacing the four 470uF, 35V capacitors with 105 deg types...

Should be good for another few years service now!