diy – GET RAD!

A while back I bid on an Alesis ADAT on eBay.

I don’t know why I bid on it, really. As soon as I did I hoped that I would be out-bid. I instantly felt guilty about committing to spending money on some outdated piece of audio equipment from the 90’s that appears to be universally hated by those who were forced to work with it at the time as some necessary piece of transitional technology.

All of the people I’d listened to sigh and groan on those Tape-Op interviews at the mention of the Alesis ADAT echoed in my head as soon as I bid.

Bit who cares. I bid like $50. No way that’s going to win, someone will out-bid me and I’ll be off the hook.

Nope. I got the notification. I’d bought the damn thing for $18. Seriously.

So I didn’t feel that bad for winning the auction.

When I got the package I could hear something rolling around inside of the unit as I unwrapped it. I opened it up to see what was going on inside and it took me a little time to shake out this little guy:

Where the hell does that guy go?

I could hear something clunking around, but it took me a while to find out what it was. This seems important:

It was tough to find, hiding out down there, you cna barely see it peeking out:

Anyways, after playing “spot-the-difference” with photos of the guts of Alesis ADAT XT’s I was able to find online, I discovered how to put it all back together:

Now the thing works flawlessly.

I’ve got it hooked up into my Mackie 1604 VLZ Pro mixer so that the four busses go into the ADAT 1/5, 2/6, 3/7, 4/8 ins, so I can put any channel 1-8 from the mixer into any channel on the ADAT. I have the eight outs from the ADAT going into the Mackie’s channels 9-16, which I can then use the L/R bus to make a stereo mix.

I was also able to score an Alesis “LRC” to which I can use to control the ADAT.

I haven’t given this a bunch of use yet. It all works and I’ve used it to record a few things, but I intend to use it mainly to bounce to from tape. I have a few songs that I want to record with the Fostex A4 I recently bought, seeing how much bouncing I can do before it starts to sound like garbage. I mean, it’s going to sound like garbage no matter what, but you know what I mean.

The first four channels of the Mackie are patched into my patch-bay, so it’s easy to run my 4-tracks into the ADAT.

I bought the Tascam M-35 used in the image at the top of this site about a year ago from the local Goodwill. It was sold as non-working and when I got it it felt as if it was going to fall apart. The entire chassis was very loose and everything was very dusty. I think that someone had this installed in a desk at one time as well, because the original wooden sides were missing.

I included a can of fizzzy water there to get an idea of the size. For 8 channels this thing is *BIG*

Here’s an idea of the grime that had to be cleaned from each channel:

Lucky for me this thing is entirely modular. After removing a couple of screws from the sides, the front wrist rest folds down to allow easy access to each channel. The channels easily slot into the back of the console and are held in place by a single screw. This makes it incredibly easy to pull a channel and work on it. The power section also slots in and out!

Opening this thing up was a treat.

I know that many people will look at this and see ancient technology, hassle, and headache, but I cannot get over the build quality and care that went into making this machine. Much of this was I am assuming was hand soldered, and you can see that all of the cabling is hand-tied. Each channel also has its own transformer on the mic input as well – sweet!

I went through each channel individually and cleaned and lubricated all of the pots, switches, and faders. I inspected each channel as well and everything looked to be in great shape.

I also cleaned all of the I/O on the backend as well. They sure don’t build them like this anymore:

After getting everything cleaned it took me a while to troubleshoot what was actually wrong with this thing. I kept testing channels, flipping them out to different spots and getting different results. It didn’t make a lot of sense until I realized that the problem was cables on the RCA send/return jacks were bad in half of them.

After replacing those with new RCA cables, everything worked perfectly – it was kind of amazing and, I think, a testament to how well built Tascam machines of this era are.

The only thing that is not funtional right now are the lights in the VU meters. The meters work fine, but the lights don’t light up. I have some new bulbs for those which I will replace.

I also intend to replace the wood sides – I have a nice piece of African Mahogany that I am going to use but will have to borrow a planer to get them to size. I will also re-cap the power section as well.

I intended to use this with an 8-track reel to reel machine, but those are getting pretty expensive. I did purchase a Fostex 4-track reel to reel machine, however, that I will post about in the future. I am pretty excited to get the two working together, but there’s some work to be done before that happens.