TAC Matchless Channel Strips...

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Andy Jackson

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 11, 2006
Messages
46
Location
Glasgow, Scotland, UK etc...
Hey y'all!

It's been a while since i built my 1176's...they've been out on tour, and beasted in the studio, and EVERYONE wants one!... :grin:

My boss has an old Matchless and he's given me some of the channel strips. I have used MNats Little PSU to power em up for a bit, but the regulators got DAMN hot.

They run on a +/- 15V Rail too.

I was wondering if anyone has any idea (ballpark) how much current these channel strips draw?

Just wondering....

Cheers Guys...and remember...keep cloning!

:grin:
 
Andy,

The Matchless channel stripps (near same as Magnum) have 10 chips on the pc-card, (1 SSM2015, 6 TL072, 2 NE5532, 1 CMOS) so they will draw approx. 3 mA/rail each average, so the channel will total draw approx. 30 mA per +/- 15 volts rail.

--Bo
 
I thoroughly recommend you try Audio Maintenance's 'Langley Mic Input upgrade kit' - http://www.audiomaintenance.com/acatalog/aml_electronic_products.html

I've done 10 channels on my Matchless and they sound great & come with a full set of capacitors for the channel.

:thumb:
 
Hi guys,

Sorry to dig up an old thread but it is right on topic anyway :). I am also considering chopping down & racking up a few Matchless channel strips, as a guy I know is parting out an entire 48 channel console. Any word on how things went with yours Andy?

I say "chop down" cos they are loooong suckers! I would have to cut off the fader and the group routing sections at the least!

Also, if anyone is interested I can get strips from the guy, test them, and then ship to wherever :)...
 
Hmmm, did more than a few albums on one of those boards back in the day.  It was mildly upgraded with hot rod caps, etc.  Paired with an MCI JH-24 and a nice room full of outboard it turned out good quality masters.  Can't say I'd pay for a channel strip though.  Is there some special appeal to these that I don't know about?
 
I guess it's just that I can get them cheap and with the Langley pre mod they might sound nice, and the EQ is pretty versatile. But yea, it ain't A Neve or API! Ha! Even if I don't use the strips themselves the Alps faders can be used to repair other consoles I guess
 
OK, didn't know about the preamp mod.  I liked the board and certainly used the pres and eqs for a lot of tracking and mixing.  Like I said, there was good outboard at the studio and we went to tape - "back in the day".  Certainly better than racking Tascam channel strips!
 
Yea the SSM2015 chip makes it hardly worth heating the soldering iron, but with a good discrete pre it could be worth a look ;-). Like you say, good outboard gear and tape, which means most of the nice sonic colourations could have come from there.
 
vinyvamos said:
Yea the SSM2015 chip makes it hardly worth heating the soldering iron.
I have to totally disagree here. These chips can be made to sound pretty good, if you design out some of their deficiencies. They don´t want to drive a load, hence add a buffer between the chip and the output. Add local rail bypass, something like 100uF + small bypass caps very close to the chip. IIRC originally there´s only 0,01uF ceramics for this purpose. That´s a bit too small. Amek was very conservative with their input filtering and bandwith limiting for some reason. Open this up carefully and change the ceramic filter caps to mica or polypropylene. Recap everything, increase coupling caps and add small bypass caps to all electrolytics.
I´ve had Neves next to my modded Amek and TAC pres and people chose the SSM2015 pres over the 1073 in a blind test.... It´s better to use ears than constantly repeat and believe Gearslutz mantras ;-)
 
Jensenmann, very interesting reply! maybe I should not shoot down these SSM chips so easily then. I honestly haven't done any A-B comparisons myself and was only going on other peoples views (like a sheep I guess, Ha!). I will certainly consider trying your mods and doing an A-B test against other consoles :)
 
Do think that the SSM2015 was also very nice....
Just take the old Product Guide of PMI and you see how good it is......
Later other company's did make 2015s aswell...later 2017 and 2019 types , but quality was different....
But SSM was a very good producer of these IC just like Burr Brown was.....
 

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