Midas H3000 24ch

[Chrisfromthepast]

At work the other day, my boss asked me to cut down one of the heritage 3000 desks from 48 channels to 24.
It works.
Jim Sawyer is the man if you have any questions.
Took about a week? Idk we had repairs and stuff as well.
I listened to about half a song before I was bored and ready for the next project, but it sure looks slick.
Can’t wait to put some lipstick on it, finish the road case, and mix some rock and roll!

 

[Chrisfromthepast]

I have a few notes for the next person new to these desks and tasked with maintenance .
The automation section has a nicad battery inside which lasts 5-20 years with regular use of the console.
If your H3000 or H2000 doesn’t see regular use, you should remove the battery for safety.
Its likely you aren’t too worried about the automation features of the desk and any show files stored on the surface are long useless at this point. Half of why you want to use the purple behemoth is tell all 5 people who are helping you flip the damned thing how awesome it sounds.
Without a battery you can’t save a scene, you need to do an unlock dance with the menu, but it works fine.
Put the battery in for every tour, take it out afterwards.
The automation section has only 1 place to swap a ribbon cable and relase the magic smoke. The only cable that plugs into the solder side is the long ribbon cable that plugs into the other fader modules.
This cable has termination resistors on either side of the run. One of mine was snapped off but in a way that seemed intact, and that took a minute to find. Sometimes the cable gets damaged by too much module insertion. Anyway, if you the automation screen says init instead of an act number and scene number, um check the fader ribbon cable for damage. Or the termination resistors, or corrosion on the termination pcb.
The fader modules themselves have a binary jumper system thats essential for the save automation, and seems important for the boot too.
For the first fader module connect jumper 1, module 2 make jumper 2, module 3 make jumpers 1 and 2, module 4 make jumper 3, module 5 make jumpers 1 and 3, its binary.
I had quite a bit of corrosion around the battery of one of our vca modules and its going to be a pain to repair.
One of our other modules shows the obvious signs of this same repair being carried out in the last decade, and I can only be thankful we are now keeping track of the battery leaks in our old Midas consoles.

 

[Chrisfromthepast]

 

[jazzcrisis]

Amazing! I've always wanted to do this. How did you go about cutting down the chassis?

 

[Chrisfromthepast]

A sawz-all blade called the torch did a bulk of the work.
Started with an angle grinder with cut off wheel to get the cut started.
Spike tape defined the line and I cut just outside of the line with the reciprocating saw. We cleaned up the edge with angle grinders.
I don’t know if Id do it this way again, but I have used those saws alot and it was quick but not very precice.
I tried a test cut with plasma cutter but I was too unwieldy and inexperienced.

 

[Chrisfromthepast]

 

[Chrisfromthepast]

Joining the bottom to the outside required a flush edge where the botttom and the bottom of the side cheek meet.
Careful with the back of the desk, where the side cheek meets a bracket that holds in the output jacks. We were one thickness of sheet metal too tight and realized a bit late in the game.
I failed to document it, but the side cheek ended up being cleaned flat only on the bottom and front, and the top side was cut to retain that purple strip, and the back required some love to integrate with the bracket (which never got cut off the desk thankfully)