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Mackie d.2 / infinium teardown and repair


Guest rasteri

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Guest rasteri

Those of you unlucky enough to have me on facebook will have already seen this, but

 

I made a video where I tear down and repair a Mackie d.2 and an Infinium fader :

 

 

Part two is coming soon, and I hope to do similar videos for some other interesting scratchy devices.

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I had one of those Mackies for a while. Not a bad mixer, but I had some LEDs die on it too I think - seemed to be a common complaint. I dread the day the Infinium goes nuts on my Scratchbox, not sure if I could easily get a replacement. Still my favourite fader to cut on but to be fair I haven't tried many of the new ones out there.

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I had one of those Mackies for a while. Not a bad mixer, but I had some LEDs die on it too I think - seemed to be a common complaint. I dread the day the Infinium goes nuts on my Scratchbox, not sure if I could easily get a replacement. Still my favourite fader to cut on but to be fair I haven't tried many of the new ones out there.

Each to their own and all that, but if you like the SB Infinium, I don't think you'll find better out there. I certainly don't think any new scratch mixers have upped the fader game at all - it's not their priority I guess. Some are solid, but I still prefer the best faders from the pre digital mixer days.

 

Don't worry about your mixer if your fader goes - I have four Rodec ones and have recently become 'email friends' with Ian who invented the fader, sold to it Infinium and then bought it back off their parent plastic mouldings company when they were going bust - he's assured me that he has spare components if the worst happens!

 

Andy - mega nerd footnote to your video... Behringer don't own Infinium as well all suspected. Ian invented the fader and sold it to some random plastic mouldings company who brought it to market, branded it Infinium and sold it to Mackie and Rodec. After some time the plastic mouldings company was going bust and they sold tiny Infinium part of the business back to Ian for a pound as it was his pet project. He then kept it going off the back of Infinium faders being used for the fader in that fancy Elektron sampler (Octotrak?). That has now come to an end, so he's wrapped it up and moved on. Apparently he did mod a couple of random mixers to retro for an Infinium, but said the work involved meant it just wasn't worth doing. So as I understand it, Ian still owns the brand and tech but currently has nowhere to use it and probably never will.

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Interesting. Are Beringer still knocking out mixers with a flavour of Infiniums in? Would they be fittable to the Scratchbox? I feel like we might have had this conversation before. I should have got a couple of official Rodec spares when I could have. To be fair I've never covered or cleaned my Scratchbox and no sign of fader problems whatsoever.

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AFAIK no, they toyed with them for a bit but I don't think any future models will come out at least. The physical parts of the fader are somewhat interchangable but the board on the bottom is unique to each company, so definitely not an easy swap.

 

I bet if you contacted Rodec though, they would have the odd spare - I bought mine not too long ago... certainly after the SB was out of production and spares weren't a problem. It seems that Rodec know their stuff is expensive and keep spares for a long time.

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  • 2 weeks later...

This thread made me paranoid about my precious Scratchbox crossfader. So I got 3 spares from the UK Rodec distro. I can upgrade both my channel faders now and keep a spare just in case. Note they screw you over with a silly small pretend fader knob.

 

Infinium.png

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What's the small knob nonsense? I got two for my upfaders from the same distributor and they came with magnificent full size knobs.

 

Like you Deft, I also have spare (eBay, £10 amazingly... but after I'd bought the two new ones of course) so had m also in the '1 Scratchbox, 4 Infiniums' club :)

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Got a link?

 

 

This thread made me paranoid about my precious Scratchbox crossfader. So I got 3 spares from the UK Rodec distro. I can upgrade both my channel faders now and keep a spare just in case. Note they screw you over with a silly small pretend fader knob.

 

Infinium.png

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Guest rasteri

BTW it looks like the Behringer infinium has changed the design quite a lot, there's only one light sensor and the gray code is much longer :

 

 

Anyone fancy telling me what's written on the chip on the rodec infiniums? I'm just curious.

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It has a funny little logo then the following:

CP3239

A1030400 01

YuG0642B (or maybe an 8)

 

Infinium_chip.jpg


Deft, did you not try going back to the distributor and telling them you like big knobs?

 

I will do. I don't really need a big knob, but I do want one.

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I finally got around to going ALL INFINIUM on my Scratchbox. I swear to god there is more (very faint) high pitched whine with these faders in. There has always been a bit if you listen with nothing connected except the headphones, and you can hear it boost when you hit the reverse switches for example, but with all infinium it sounds louder to me. Rockwell, you ever notice something like this? You hear a faint whine through the headphones when nothing is playing? I know a bit of noise is pretty par for the course with electronics in general, but it seems louder now to me.

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Re: Rodec whine.

 

Honestly, I'll have to check mine Deft. I haven't/didn't notice any difference when I upgraded my upfaders to Infiniums.

 

But... a couple of times my power cable has been a little stretched and the cable has has some tension put on where it joins the screw in 5 pin adaptor and made a really unsubtle buzz until tension was released. Since this has happned a couple of times, i'm sure my master output isn't quite as quiet as it used to be when ramped up. Like you're saying, I'd have to be wearing headphones to notice and turn the master up over 3/4 volume. I'm 90% sure my issue was caused by excessive tension on the cable though and have been meaning to open up the five hole plug and chop a couple of inches off and resolder it to see if it solves it.

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  • 1 month later...

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