Tascam DP008ex Headphone Out…

[TimG]

I was thinking I had blown out the headphone amplifier, because with signal going in and tracks armed, I can see the levels but can only barely hear anything through the headphones.

It was recently fine, but I’ve been running weird stuff into it in different places around the house.

Reading some online, the suggestion is maybe the solder to the headphone jack has become broken or loose, because of how often it gets towed by the headphones or other jacks in practice.looks fine from outside!

This emboldened me to take my “junk” thrift store Tascam DP-03SD apart to address a broken momentary “on switch”. I didn’t want to keep sending a shim in, so touching the two yellow leads by the display, work to both turn it on and turn it off. Gonna be especially careful about saving before shutting down!

If you didn’t know, the DP-03SD is the exact same machine as the DP-008 except with faders, and more functions on the top level, but I am not aware of any specification differences and the SD cards work interchangeably.

OK 9 screws and the back comes off, remove it from the SD card size first.

There does look like strain on the pcb by the jack?

The two screws on the top of the pcb don’t free the board connected by the ribbon yet.

Tomorrow I’ll remove the screws by the RCAs and XLRs and see if it all flips over together.

 

[TimG]

Well that wasn’t it. There was some additional force I couldn’t see discouraging a more vigorous dissssembly.

But heating the solder pads from the exposed side seems to have restored the signal out the 1/8 jack. .

Lots of monitoring solutions involving the rca monitor outs and tiny external amps, but the all-in-one aspect to this is so good for music and testing.

#strainrelief

 

[TimG]

I went back inside and found the trick to removing the PCB so you can access both sides of the headphone jack is to remove the batttery holder, which will allow you so slide the pcb board towards the front, and the rear jacks pull into the case.

There are a couple tiny jumpers to remove and replace, easily.

The jack itself didn’t seem damaged, so I removed most of the old solder and resoldered the headphone jack pins.

Seems to be working great now! I’ll be more careful about pulling it around by the cans!

 

[creature.of.habit]

Hello Tim, apologies since this is completely unrelated, but I was always curious about the 008 pocket sized siab, and was wondering how do you like the plate reverbs on it?

I think the new Model 12/16/24 series use Belton bricks for their built-in multi-fx, but I doubt that's the case with these earlier models.

 

[TimG]

My main goal has been to try to use this to record very clean tracks, with most of the processing either on line-in, or mixing down in a DAW.

I haven’t really mixed and “mastered” tracks in this yet.

Just messing around, the reverbs sound good and not gimmicky, conservative mostly. They won’t sound bad as the basis for anything. And any effect on one of these can be undone.

I’ll see if I can find out the provenance of these. I would not be surprised if it is the same, at least because the old DP-03 8 track had the same recorder and effects as this one. I’m sure this was a discussion somewhere!

 

[creature.of.habit]

Just messing around, the reverbs sound good and not gimmicky, conservative mostly. They won’t sound bad as the basis for anything. And any effect on one of these can be undone.

That's good to know, appreciate it. I used many siabs back in the early 2000s and always found the fx suffered a bit of digititis, but they're also very dependent on the quality of the sound source at the input level (external preamps always made a world of difference with these). I'd like to get one again, not for daw interfacing, but as a travel sketchpad, something quite small but still capable.

I've always wondered how hard or possible it would be to hack these and bypass the fx to have an aux send/return and a couple of inserts. I've successfully hacked my cassette 4 tracks to have input transformers and inserts, but I suppose this would be a whole different ball game with everything being digital.

 

[TimG]

I believe in settings you can make the efffects “pre” or “post” set for each channel.
On the larger Tascam DP24-32 you can only use one reverb at a time, and you can add different reverbs by bouncing () so these small ones have advantages.

I try to run an input chain of analog effects. You can also scrape the raw files and copy them to a DAW, and send them through analog processing.

I’m not sure how you would get analog out the back with only the RCA monitor pair, and/or stereo headphone out.
You can do two I guess, panned left and right.
Easier to get second and third players on the headphone mix: reverb only for monitors, or for recording. I have a 1/8 Star connector.

Also it’s so great with Rhodes piano.

 

[creature.of.habit]

I’m not sure how you would get analog out the back with only the RCA monitor pair, and/or stereo headphone out.
You can do two I guess, panned left and right.
Easier to get second and third players on the headphone mix: reverb only for monitors, or for recording. I have a 1/8 Star connector.

I actually mixdown to mono cassette, so if it would be possible to get one of the outputs into an external fx and back onto say channel 8, this could actually work. But I wonder about a feedback loop in that scenario...

 

[TimG]

Like serial processing?
Out Stereo Monitor Left -> Cool Device -> Input 2 DP?
Huh, that might easily work but I’ve never tried it

You have all the limitations of the monitoring, it won’t “play” and “record simulatneously, but will send a monitor output while recording.
if you could the above, could you also send Stereo Monitor Left to channels 3, 4, and 5.
For a single source this could work, theoretically?

 

[creature.of.habit]

Like serial processing?
Out Stereo Monitor Left -> Cool Device -> Input 2 DP?
Huh, that might easily work but I’ve never tried it

You have all the limitations of the monitoring, it won’t “play” and “record simultaneously, but will send a monitor output while recording.
if you could the above, could you also send Stereo Monitor Left to channels 3, 4, and 5.
For a single source this could work, theoretically?

My thinking is coming out of one of the outputs (L or R), into an external spring reverb that doesn't have wet/dry (so only really meant to be used in auxiliary capacity), and bring it back on one of the mixer channels to mix with, while obviously only recording in mono and only really recording/monitoring the side I'm not using for the external effect. My aim would be to mix with an external effect, not really record it per se. Mixing down would happen to an external device, so this would only have to work while mixing, really.

I wasn't thinking of coming back on the xlr input, no. I'm also guessing that this would only work, if it works at all, in mixing mode...

 

[TimG]

I don’t know. I have a spring reverb mixer that I use on input.

I can try and experiment to run a drum machine in, dry, take a channel off the monitor to send through the reverb and back into channel 2,
So one is all dry and two is all wet.

You might be able to make it wetter by sending monitor out right into channel 3?

The device itself is really forgiving on matching levels that are anywhere normal

 

[creature.of.habit]

I can try and experiment to run a drum machine in, dry, take a channel off the monitor to send through the reverb and back into channel 2,
So one is all dry and two is all wet.

That's quite alright, Tim, I appreciate the insights and I don't wish to derail this thread any further. I'll surely come upon a cheap one eventually and try these things for myself. Thanks again!

 

[TimG]

Well the headphone out jack is fixed.
I like the box again!
So this thread will sit for a while, but I’ll come back if I do the test. I’m curious now.

If I decide to make a better repair of the power button on the DP-03, with the same guts and faders, I’ll post that somewhere too.
Right now you touch two wires instead of a contact switch.