Thanks Dave, that was a good read. I'm looking forward to hearing about the AMEK's, Trident and Neve's when you get a chance.
I had a couple of pages written on the Trident yesterday but the I-MAC crashed last night before I got to post it damn!!!!
I was bummed about re-writing it in between microphone builds and upgrades today and then Vincent sent me a link to his video singing Mona Lisa into our CM49.
That made my day and energized me to keep going.
What I discovered over the weekend was that to pickup up a used Trident Series 80 is way beyond the majority of our budgets.
I saw a used one selling for $65K which is the price I paid for one of mine new in 1980 and ours was customized by Malcolm for our requirements.
The Trident consoles are getting "long in the tooth" as mine was built in early 1980. The TSM and Series 80 were the last of the "great" Trident consoles in my experience.
The TSM was the big brother to the Series 80 and it was set up to mix in Quad and came with Uptown Automation I believe. The TSM sold for over $100K new.
The TSM had 1/2 throw faders in the EQ and metal toggle switch which I prefer over pushbutton switches.
Attachment DeletedAttachment DeletedAttachment DeletedAfter, the TSM and Series 80. Trident made a Series 70 and a Tri-mix.
These console didn't have the pair of transistors driving the unbalanced outputs like the TSM and Series 80 which yields a 50 ohm output.
The Series 80 had no problem driving the 600 ohm balanced inputs of the Studer A80. The Tri-mix was basically a live PA mixer that could be used for live recording.
The Series 70 was a 16 buss console and the match pair of output transistors were replaced with a 5534 IC which could drive 600 ohm. The TLO71 would only drive 2K.
Even the unbalanced inserts of the Series 80b did not like to drive the 1176D with its transformer coupled input which was 600 ohm the 1176F sounded much better in the inserts.
However, Bryce fixed this problem in the WA-76 which is also class "A" and transformer coupled.
The Trident Series 80 also had an unbalanced group bussing and the auxillary sends could get noisy. You had to make sure you sent lots of level down the aux send lines.
The Series 80 had phantom power switches on each channel but these were internal and you had to remove the module to engage or dis-engage the 48v.
The patchbay points also have to be cleaned and the jacks were soldered onto a motherboard and would break away occasionally if the tt plugs was stressed too much.
We had to replace several in our Tridents during my tenure at Ocean Sound.
All the pushbutton switches have silver plated contact and tend to get contaminated.
Even when our console was only 5 years old we were cleaning these switches and pots every 6 months or so and it ties two techy types a full day.
People still smoke in the control room in the eary 80's so I imagine there was less cleaning required after smoking regulations became law and we banned it in the control room.
I remember my ex-partner at Ocean Sound sold off the used Series 80 that we bought from Manfred Mann about 10 years ago for $15K.
I cannot believe the two I saw for sale on-line over the weekend were in the $48K to $65K range one was a 40 input but still!!!!!
Hopefully, for that price these would have be re-capped, with new pots and switches.
The Trident Series 80b had 56 pin Edac connectors under the patchbay for all the I/O's. In the later Trident Series 80c they switched to Tuchel connectors like the MXP3036.
As, drbill explained even if you found one at auction for the top of Martin's budget of $7500 you would have to address the following issues:
ALLl analogue consoles pots, switches, faders and channel edge connectors needed to be cleaned from time to time and most likely some would need replacing.
The Trident Series 80b pots were carbon and they are dual tracking reverse audio taper 100k's with a 1/8" shaft. This pot brings up both mic preamp gains stages in tandem.
If these pots stop tracking which they do as they wear and get old, then the preamp section is suseptible to oscillating or getting "fuzzy/noise" when turned.
We had electrolytic capacitors start to fail and I had to re-cap it and change out all the capacitors at the output of all IC gain stages within the first couple of years.
The faders were FADEX not P&G. These faders were quite good but wouldn't have the longevity of a $200 P&G. We had two that we had to replaced and were not repairable.
EDAC connectors without the pins are about $21 each and I believe from memory there were about 10 of these and it take a good hour to crimp or solder the pins and push them into the EDAC. If you push them into the wrong slot by accident then you have to use a $100 extractor tool to remove them.
Often these cable get left behind as they run through the floor of the original install and are just cut off. It is not worth trying to re-use the cut-off conectors unless they will reach your A/D converters.
So, you have to re-wire about 10- connectors which take a good hour each by someone who has worked with these before.
If you want reliability the power supply would have to be re-built or a new one fabricated from Power One modules. This would be around $500.
Two folks without back problems can move a Series 80 but it could cost anywhere from $500 to $1000 to transport it unless you have a truck and are willing to make a road trip.
So, the rule of thumb is if you get the console for $7500 you need to budget 1/2 of that again for the install, transportation and maintenance.
You might get lucky if it came with some cabling and get it delivered, cabled up and working for the transportation plus $1000 to $1500 if you are able to work with a few inconsistencies and less that 32 channels working and do the upgrades over time.
But as drbill said, if you could manage to scrape $7500 together for a Trident that came up on auction you would not be able to get it up and working even if you were able to pick up the console yourself without spending a minimum of 20% of your the original console outlay. You would be extremely lucky to get a $7500 console installed and working for $10K.
Here is a shot of the Trident Series 80b module showing the pair of output transistors and the input transformer.
You can see that these modules would be easy to maintain as all the capacitors are through hole and the IC's are all on sockets.
Attachment DeletedAll Trident console after the Tri-mix and Series 80 console had transformerless preamps. The have similar sound EQ but do not have the headroom of the Series 80.
These later Trident consoles are not known for their big and clean sound. However, the EQ and signal routing is quite useable and easier to service than an ATB.
I am going to post this now while the IMAC remains healthy. To get to the next level of console then we have to look for balanced buss mixing.
With balance buss mixing you start to get a cleaner, "bigger" sound with more punch. As, there is at least 6db more headroom in the bussing circuits.
I think I might have just thought of a solution for folks looking for a Professional Sounding Summing Mixer by taking a page from Neve and the Sony MXP3036 as well as combining it with 500 series modules. I will have to do some more homework and calculations but my thoughts are:
What if there was a mixing frame with 12 full throw faders, lighted mutes and a pan pot.
Above these faders were 3-racks that accepted 500-modules. I am planning on releasing the MT8016 next year as a 500 series module.
Channel 11 & 12 would be to line modules with input transformers like those in the Neve 80 series configures as a transformer coupled summing amp.
If you used Carnhill transformers the mixer would sound like a Neve 80 series but you would have the option of choosing different preamps and EQ's.
You can slot in your favourite compressor and EQ above these L/R modules for buss EQ and compression.
You can now load the top 500 series slots with your favourite 500 preamps.
You can load the 2nd row with your favourite 500 series EQ's .
You can load the 3rd row with your favourite 500 series compressors.
All 500 series power supplies and IO's are compatible. You don't need to load every channel at once.
A bypass edge card can slot into the 500 series connectors to jump the I/O's and you put a blank panel in for those slots not fitted with modules.
The signal would still flow through to the faders. Even if you just had a microphone preamp modules the signal would still flow through to the faders to be panned.
I will try and draw up my idea and a signal flow block diagram.
How, many folks out there have 500 series modules?
Tomorrow, I will talk about re-formatting old broadcast consoles with balanced bussing and why I think the MXP3036 is the best used console on the market for the price.
Here is the picture of the Mother of All Consoles. Its the biggest console I have ever seen.
Its a Neve V88 92 input in the control room at the Barbara Streisand Sound Stage on the Sony Lot in LA.
That's Mike our European partner feeling right at home behind the Neve. This is the Sound Stage where the sound track from the Wizard of Oz, Dr. Zivago and Gone with the Wind was recorded. They didn't have the Neve back then but the massive Sound Stage on the other side of the glass hasn't changed much since 1933.
Cheers, Dave