Neotek Meter Connections and Modification Questions

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thelivingroom

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I have a Neotek Series 1e 10-channel + stereo bus sidecar with 11-segment (and Peak LED) meters, and for the past 16 years of ownership something with the meter connections has never seemed quite correct. The peak LED's have never worked, other than being dimly on all of the time on all 12 meters. However, if I touch the bottom mount screw on the faceplate, it toggles turning them on and the meter off on that corresponding channel, and vice versa when I touch it again. There's a resistor that has a trace that connects to that mounting pad, but it is a dead end as that pad connects to nothing conductive currently (the faceplate is some sort of plastic). I thought about just pulling the Peak LED out, because I don't know why I need a -10dB peak LED anyway, but I want things to be correct. I have some down time right now and decided to finally pull them out and try to check making them right off the list. I gave up on trying to track down a schematic, so I've spent the past few days drawing the board and component placement to scale in AutoCAD, labeling everything with a reference number, mirroring it so I could draw the traces (1-sided board), then drawing the schematic from that, but I can't make sense of what the issue is or if the rest of the power and grounds are hooked up correctly. Could someone take a look at the attached schematic and help me make some sense of it? Pins 1-8 are connected to all 12 meters via bus wire, with 9 & 10 receiving unbalanced signal via each channel. I have two red text boxes in the schematic and colored some wires red, noting where something isn't or may not be correct. I apologize in advance if the schematic isn't drawn perfectly to U.S. military or secret government standards; I'm fairly new to that side of things and did my best. Feel free to let me know if I need to add any more information!

This would be a luxury modification, but I also don't like that they top out at +3dB (over 0VU), rendering them pretty useless for reliably monitoring sharper transient instruments going to tape, and tracking drums with them has been their primary use. My Otari Series 54 console's meters go up to +18, and I keep them in Peak mode for monitoring certain instruments like drums, percussion, and acoustic guitar going to tape, and use the tape machine's VU's for monitoring other things like bass, electric guitar, vocals, etc. Where would be the best place to add a trimmer to be able to calibrate the Neotek's meters to top out at something like +10dBu? And this is super luxury dream, but is there a spot I could add a trimmer to adjust brightness?

Thank you!
 

Attachments

  • Neotek VU3-04 Meter.pdf
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Some/many of the Neotek meters had a "finger sensitive" screw on the plastic face panel that (IIRC) toggled between peak and "VU" modes. That's what the FET is doing in your posted schemo.

I've attached some Meter schemos I have on my drive, so maybe everything can somehow correlate.

Bri
 

Attachments

  • Neotek-led.jpg
    Neotek-led.jpg
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  • NeotekLEDVU.pdf
    34 KB · Views: 1
  • light meter.pdf
    2.4 MB · Views: 1
Some/many of the Neotek meters had a "finger sensitive" screw on the plastic face panel that (IIRC) toggled between peak and "VU" modes. That's what the FET is doing in your posted schemo.

I've attached some Meter schemos I have on my drive, so maybe everything can somehow correlate.

Bri
You’re a lifesaver! The schematics and explanation about Peak/VU switching helps a ton. The only meter schematic I had in my packet is for the 10-segment, and it’s not even in the ballpark. I’ll be able to fix everything correctly tomorrow. Thank you so much!!!

Chris
 
Some/many of the Neotek meters had a "finger sensitive" screw on the plastic face panel that (IIRC) toggled between peak and "VU" modes. That's what the FET is doing in your posted schemo.

I've attached some Meter schemos I have on my drive, so maybe everything can somehow correlate.

Bri
I got it all buttoned up and feel very satisfied. I went ahead and recapped them since I already had caps leftover from when I did the strips, then repaired five that have always had a bottom LED or two lit, even with no signal. Two had bad MPSH54’s (replaced with BC556 rotated 180 degrees, as it's CBE vs. the MPSH54 being EBC), two had a bad LM324, and one was the TL084. I think the touch screw just drops the metering 10dB, and doesn’t switch between Peak and VU. When I have them at 0 and touch the screw, they drop to -10. They sure put confusing nomenclature on the faceplate, and there’s no mention of that feature in all of my Neotek documentation, even when they talk about the meters haha. It will be useful when I have something blowing the levels out, especially when I use the stereo bus (like in the photo below).

While searching for MPSH54 subs, I came across a post in here that had the brightness controller schematic, so I made that on a perfboard, as well as adding the control voltage trimmer and some diodes to drop the unregulated down to 30v (from 32.xx, right at the max for the LM324’s). They’ve never been this bright, and all sit on 0 now when outputting +4dBu.

Thanks again Brian!

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F8849811-ED6F-4116-A51D-5311191840F3.jpeg
148BA25E-878D-4615-A41F-E567799D9BB3.jpeg
 
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