Crane Song Avocet schematics?

[David Aurora]

A customer of mine recently got shafted on a Crane Song Avocet. Long story short, he bought it off FB Marketplace or something and couldn't test on pickup, then found it didn't work. He brought it in for a look and as soon as I popped the lid I could tell the whole thing had been swimming, it was covered in liquid residue/corrosion/rust. Not good. I could also see a bunch of really bad repair attempts in a few places (resulting in broken traces etc). Even more not good.

Anyway, I've cleaned the hell out of it and fixed up a bunch of power supply faults, broken tracks and replaced some obviously damaged components. It's now at the point where it mostly works, but there are still some issues with metering and the mono/polarity flip section.

The whole time we've been trying to get schematics from Crane Song or the local distributor without luck (at one point Crane Song replied asking for the serial and board numbers, but never responded again after we supplied that info). I'm really trying to avoid having to sit there and trace things out by hand, any chance someone has a schematic? I've just emailed Crane Song for like the 5th time but I'm not holding my breath on a reply.

Thanks!

 

[OneRoomStudio]

It hasn’t been all that long (around 8 months) since Dave Hill’s passing. I get the impression that the folks still at Crane Song are still trying to pick up the pieces and find their way forward. Dave was very much the heart and soul of the company. Give them some time. They may still get back to you.

 

[mrclunk]

Do you have any before and after pics? Quite an undertaking!

 

[David Aurora]

Do you have any before and after pics? Quite an undertaking!

Tonnes, but they aren't really that interesting to be honest Just a whole lot of liquid residue and rust etc, then less of that A lot of it was in such a bad state that it's never going to look pretty again, but at least it works properly now.

So... I've now got another Crane Song unit here that had also been butchered by someone else (thankfully not as badly though), and sure enough Crane Song and the distributor are both ghosting us. I was under the impression they were carrying on with the company, but it sure doesn't feel like it. Emails go unanswered, phone just rings out.

So yeah, the Avocet is back in action thanks to reverse engineering things, but if anyone has schematics for an STC-8 that'd be great so I don't have to do that again

 

[verbos]

Tonnes, but they aren't really that interesting to be honest Just a whole lot of liquid residue and rust etc, then less of that A lot of it was in such a bad state that it's never going to look pretty again, but at least it works properly now.

So... I've now got another Crane Song unit here that had also been butchered by someone else (thankfully not as badly though), and sure enough Crane Song and the distributor are both ghosting us. I was under the impression they were carrying on with the company, but it sure doesn't feel like it. Emails go unanswered, phone just rings out.

So yeah, the Avocet is back in action thanks to reverse engineering things, but if anyone has schematics for an STC-8 that'd be great so I don't have to do that again

David,

I can't help you with anything here, but I have an Avocet that works fine then the left side goes out. Meter is showing nothing too. If I turn it off and back on the left side comes back for a while, then disappears again. I haven't gotten anywhere with trying to get help from Cranesong. Any ideas?

Mark

 

[pucho812]

David,

I can't help you with anything here, but I have an Avocet that works fine then the left side goes out. Meter is showing nothing too. If I turn it off and back on the left side comes back for a while, then disappears again. I haven't gotten anywhere with trying to get help from Cranesong. Any ideas?

Mark

Possible solder joint or lytics. They maybe be starting to get high esr

 

[AlbertoGlez]

I purchased an Avocet 2A from Reverb a couple of months ago and I just had time to connect it and tried it out. There is a noise coming form the left channel. Even if I tried different outputs the same noise is on all three but completely clean on the right channel. I have everything disconnected from the unit, the only two wires connected are the speaker cables.
What is weird is that it was working fine the first two days that I tried it but on the third day the noise started to appear, and its pretty loud.

I tried reaching Crane Song but they have not responded, and from reading this forum it looks like they are likely to never respond. Do you have any suggestions? Are there any repair shops you recommend? I am located in deep south Texas, USA.

 

[kags]

I purchased an Avocet 2A from Reverb a couple of months ago and I just had time to connect it and tried it out. There is a noise coming form the left channel. Even if I tried different outputs the same noise is on all three but completely clean on the right channel. I have everything disconnected from the unit, the only two wires connected are the speaker cables.
What is weird is that it was working fine the first two days that I tried it but on the third day the noise started to appear, and its pretty loud.

I tried reaching Crane Song but they have not responded, and from reading this forum it looks like they are likely to never respond. Do you have any suggestions? Are there any repair shops you recommend? I am located in deep south Texas, USA.

I’ve had similar issues with other monitor controllers and it’s almost always caps -either around the output driver or in the power supply. I have found some bad output driver opamps that got noisy, too.

 

[outoftune]

I work at a store that sells Cranesong products. They have been very slow to reply the last few months, but are still in business and trying to keep things going. I don't think they will ever release the schematics and attempting service on one of these without schematics seems like an extremely difficult / impossible task.

I have recently sent an Avocet into them for repair. Try emailing: [email protected]