mkruger
Well-known member
i'm looking for schematics or service manuals for a Neve VR60 console. Complete, partial or anything that can help. I'd also like a users/operators manual too. ...we are starting restoration on one soon. thanks!
schematics for Neve VR60 console
- Thread starter mkruger
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mkruger
Well-known member
i havn't tried AMS-Neve, yet, because i know these documents can run hundreds of dollars... like scenaria mentioned. i just thought i'd check to see if someone had a used set first. i posted somthing in the black market too.
i would be interested in just borrowing them if someone let me... of course they would get them back in the condition i got them.
I wish we had gotten the manuals with it... but we got a good deal regardless... actually it needs a ton of work, but that's half the fun!
i would be interested in just borrowing them if someone let me... of course they would get them back in the condition i got them.
I wish we had gotten the manuals with it... but we got a good deal regardless... actually it needs a ton of work, but that's half the fun!
SSLtech
Well-known member
yeah, you'd hafta be kidding about copying or scanning one! The service manual is a build-set of part number lists... plus some stunningly badly (from a service engineering way of thinking) laid-out set of schematics.
There is no information or documentation available for the recall. I doscovered this in 1996, when ours went crazy. After an almost complete set of board replacements didn't solve anything, I stared to back-track it. The folks at AMS/Neve had this to say:
Neve had failed fairly comprehensively to get any sort of automation that it had built accepted (NECAM, NECAM II, NECAM 96 etc) and so they gave up. They re-badged a Martinsoound product "Flying Faders" as their own, and things got better. in the meantime, GML had started to sell plenty of automation systems to people who laughed at the idea of Neve automation. To deliberately screw George Massenburg Labs, AMS/Neve Kept the way that recall was integrated into the computer a closely guarded secret. That way, GML could never easily add recall to their system using the console's built-in hardware system. It worked. Flying Faders sold. To this day, most people think that it was a Neve product. It wasn't. Martinsound still sells it, Neve doesn't. Neve never told Martinsound how they sat Recall (a stupid, DOS-based dinosaur) onto the system, they didn't have to. You exited Flying faders to get into recall. In comparison to the SSL fully-integrated approach, it was ridiculous.
Eventually, GML was squeezed down so far in terms of automation market-share that it no longer becams necessary to keep the recall hardware stuff secret: since everyone with recall had FF, nobody was compatible with GML any more, so GML died out of VR compatibility in terms of file-sharing. One big problem... nobody left at AMS/Neve knew how the system worked. They had plans of the boards, they had production lines set up to build them, and when you plugged them together, it worked... but if it didn't nobody knew why! They just board-swapped until it worked, then they sold it.
Ours took a lightning strike, and at one point I had techs in Los Angeles, Nashville and New York all working on the issue. I asked for schemos, but there were none to be had. Eventually I traced the problem to a bunch of Cmos chips in every bucket on teh console. They all had to be replaced, after the lightning did a number on the console (turned out to be the address decoding busses... everything listening to the busses had taken a hit... that's every channel in every bucket!!!)
I have a full set of service schematics, but there are probably 700 pages. They are not all the same size, there will be some A4, a couple of A3, somemore A4, another A3.... you'd have to spend a whole day with a photocopier, and it's way beyond what you could reasonably expect anyone to copy for you unless you paid them reasonably... cheaper to get the real thing unless you find a near neighbour with a set.
...By the way, I do have one schematic for a small section of the recall system... it's about all that anyone at AMS/Neve has these days...
I have to go and re-install a VR I installed 7 years ago, then de-commissioned a couple of years ago and moved across country... It's getting re-installed in February, and I get to re-open the crate pretty soon, so VR things have been on my mind lately...
Keith
There is no information or documentation available for the recall. I doscovered this in 1996, when ours went crazy. After an almost complete set of board replacements didn't solve anything, I stared to back-track it. The folks at AMS/Neve had this to say:
Neve had failed fairly comprehensively to get any sort of automation that it had built accepted (NECAM, NECAM II, NECAM 96 etc) and so they gave up. They re-badged a Martinsoound product "Flying Faders" as their own, and things got better. in the meantime, GML had started to sell plenty of automation systems to people who laughed at the idea of Neve automation. To deliberately screw George Massenburg Labs, AMS/Neve Kept the way that recall was integrated into the computer a closely guarded secret. That way, GML could never easily add recall to their system using the console's built-in hardware system. It worked. Flying Faders sold. To this day, most people think that it was a Neve product. It wasn't. Martinsound still sells it, Neve doesn't. Neve never told Martinsound how they sat Recall (a stupid, DOS-based dinosaur) onto the system, they didn't have to. You exited Flying faders to get into recall. In comparison to the SSL fully-integrated approach, it was ridiculous.
Eventually, GML was squeezed down so far in terms of automation market-share that it no longer becams necessary to keep the recall hardware stuff secret: since everyone with recall had FF, nobody was compatible with GML any more, so GML died out of VR compatibility in terms of file-sharing. One big problem... nobody left at AMS/Neve knew how the system worked. They had plans of the boards, they had production lines set up to build them, and when you plugged them together, it worked... but if it didn't nobody knew why! They just board-swapped until it worked, then they sold it.
Ours took a lightning strike, and at one point I had techs in Los Angeles, Nashville and New York all working on the issue. I asked for schemos, but there were none to be had. Eventually I traced the problem to a bunch of Cmos chips in every bucket on teh console. They all had to be replaced, after the lightning did a number on the console (turned out to be the address decoding busses... everything listening to the busses had taken a hit... that's every channel in every bucket!!!)
I have a full set of service schematics, but there are probably 700 pages. They are not all the same size, there will be some A4, a couple of A3, somemore A4, another A3.... you'd have to spend a whole day with a photocopier, and it's way beyond what you could reasonably expect anyone to copy for you unless you paid them reasonably... cheaper to get the real thing unless you find a near neighbour with a set.
...By the way, I do have one schematic for a small section of the recall system... it's about all that anyone at AMS/Neve has these days...
I have to go and re-install a VR I installed 7 years ago, then de-commissioned a couple of years ago and moved across country... It's getting re-installed in February, and I get to re-open the crate pretty soon, so VR things have been on my mind lately...
Keith
G
Guest
Guest
Seriously, like Keith said it will be well worth it if AMS will sell you a set of service manuals. They are a study in how not to put together that type of thing. The schematics are all various sizes and span across multiple pages for the same circuit. Not to mention that some of the **** makes absolutely no sense as to how they split up the various circuits. Granted, this also seems to translate to the actual construction of the console itself(can you tell I've spent a bit of time inside one of these monsters?). Unfortunately the documents we had left with the console a few years ago, but I do have one that might come in handy. It's a module diagram with all of the corresponding AMS/Neve part numbers for every switch, button cap, pot, knob ,knob insert and bulb listed on it. If I can dig it up I'll try and get it scanned for you. I remember it being slightly faded but it was probably one of the most useful doc's for the console. **** I might even still have some spares kicking around somewhere, I'll have a look for those as well. As far as the recall goes, I remember that page Keith mentioned. The only paperwork I ever saw on it. To add to the recall story, as they told us when we had problems, the guy who designed the system apparently moved to India and was never heard from again. Another person to contact if you run into a wall with it might be John Musgrave in LA, he knows those thing inside and out. I don't know how much he'd be willing to help you with as he has his own business of restoring those consoles but you never know.
Good luck,
Zach
Good luck,
Zach
CJ
Well-known member
Please turn your head when you cough! :razz:
G
Guest
Guest
Somebodies ears must have been ringing.
:green:
Heh. Yeah, the mini fader boards particularly can give one conniptions. The documentation is not the worst in the business (Otari anyone? Maybe there's a vote in there somewhere.), but I've seen better. It doesn't bug me much though.
The VRs are nowhere near as ridiculous to get your head around as the 81 series. Aaaaargh. Signal path on ribbon cable going everywhere. Active line recievers (or were they drivers?) in the patchbay for crying out loud. And though pretty complete, the docs for that thing define "labyrinthine". I hope I don't see that one again.
Give me an 80 series any day.
Oh, yeah, if anyone needs switches for them (Vs), get them now or forever hold your peace. Neve told me the manufacturer won't make them anymore. Period. Neve offered to buy the molds, no go. Good news is, they'll sell just the catches, and you can disassemble the switch and replace the bit. Frankly, easier than getting the switch off the board.
Oh, I mean the Isostats, not the cut/solo Licon.
If you're re-capping (and who wouldn't be), don't forget to check for goo.
Let me know if you've got 2 spare meg in your inbox for the user docs.
