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Gear / Technical Help => Recording Gear => Topic started by: jeenash on December 20, 2014, 05:24:32 PM
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I just got a great deal on one of these machines on ebay but it didn't come with the digi input conversion cable. Rather than buy or build a cable I decided to try mounting a panel mount rca jack to the body and wire it internally to the board. There was just enough room between the rechargeable battery door and the 2.5mm input hole. There is a small digital input board with very tiny wires that I was able to piggy back on. You will need some very small wires to make the connections. I used wire out of a broken HDMI cable. The shield goes to the black wire or the solder connection labeled as "g" on the board. The center (hot) of the rca goes to the blue wire. I also connected the shield to the internal metal frame of the machine. I haven't tested it extensively but it seems to work great. If anyone wants to mod there machine and has questions I'll try to help you out but unless you are pretty good with soldering I wouldn't attempt it. I'm not sure about how to post pics here but here it is. (http://i1382.photobucket.com/albums/ah274/jeenash1/DSCN9184_zps7c114586.jpg) (http://s1382.photobucket.com/user/jeenash1/media/DSCN9184_zps7c114586.jpg.html)
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Hawt!
Terry
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That looks great! Very impressive.
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That is an awesome hack. Nice work!
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You could do grist business with this mod.
I bet for $50, you'd have people lining up for this.
-Noah
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You could do grist business with this mod.
I bet for $50, you'd have people lining up for this.
-Noah
My first thought as well! Very nice bro!
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nice work - Is their enough room to put it on the bottom between the XLR's?
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I could be bought but that wasn't my intent. I'm just sharing what I was stupid enough to attempt on a nearly new machine. H20 - There is very little room in there. I'm pretty sure I have found the only spot it can go. I thought that would be an ideal place too. It looks like you would have to unsolder the xlrs from the board to see that area which I wasn't willing to do.
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Very nice, Tascam was stupid to make a proprietary connector/adapter cable for the digital in on this deck.
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Great work! Since you said you piggybacked onto existing connections, I assume you're saying that the functionality of the 2.5mm jack was left intact?
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In theory the function of the 2.5mm jack should be unaffected but without the cable I have no way of testing it. As far as the remote cable goes, I had a little snafu with the soldering iron burning halfway through it (thought I smelled something funny :facepalm:). I really don't have any intent of using the remote cable anyway. I doubt that it would allow use of spdif and remote at the same time because one plug is 4 conductor and one is 3. The two conductors for spdif are the two farthest from the tip so the remote cable would short them together when plugged in.
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Just disassembled my DR100 MKII and found that you can easily remove both the Audio board which is mounted to the back of the battery compartment and the TRRS PCB board is held in place with a screw that goes into the battery box. Once you remove the screw you can easily remove both boards from the enclosure and perform the soldering work on them. I will never use the remote control for my application which is live concert recording. I am only interested in installing a locking style connector to prevent pull out during recording sessions. I am installing a 3 pin LEMO miniature socket and have the mating connector to make a new spdif cable with. I have a locking connector on the other end of the cable that goes to my A/D microphone pre-amplifier so all will be great as soon as it is reassembled.
I will be deleting the TRRS pcb from the recorder as it is simply jumper wired to the Audio pcb. Removal allows me to install my LEMO connector in the existing hole by simply enlarging it slightly and then securing it in place with the supplied washer and nut to the enclosure. There is plenty of room inside to modify the jack to another style if you delete the TRRS pcb. The wires are 30 gauge which is extremely fine wire. The audio pcb and TRRS boards are available from Tascam presently for $12.00 and $18.15 respectively if you were to ever need to replace them.
You can also get the schematics and parts manual for free as a pdf file by asking the parts department to email it to you. It makes working on the recorder quite simple and there is a lot of interesting information in the parts manual for test menues used for repair and set-up of the recorder as well.
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^ Great info, thanks. If you take pictures during your project, of the finished result, and post them here, I think it would also be greatly appreciated. :)
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Earlier today I made the modification to the DR-100MKII which went pretty smoothly. To perform the modification first remove both the main battery as well as the reserve batteries , then remove the two Black screws on the rear panel located near the top just below the built in microphones. You may now remove the rear panel and remove the two screws holding the tripod mounting bracket which need to be removed to gain access to the battery box which needs to be removed. Remove the three black screws holding the battery box in place. Carefully remove the battery box which has the TRRS connector board attached to it with a small screw located on the bottom of the battery box remove the battery box completely by compressing the spring on the side of the battery box so that you are able to slip it through the opening in the bottom of the battery box. You should now have fairly good access to the area that you need to work on inside of the recorder without further dis-assembly of the recorder.
I used a Lemo connector which is extremely small and required opening up the hole left from the removal of the TRRS connector with a 7/16" drill bit. After carefully enlarging the hole to accommodate the connector I installed the connector with the washer and nut which was supplied with it. This Lemo miniature connector is a locking connector which is keyed. I will not be using the remote control functions of the recorder so will not be reinstalling the TRRS board which is simply jumped to the audio board with 5 clearly labelled connections. The wires from the TRRS board were desoldered and connections to the new connector were made using the Blue wire from the Audio Board which is labelled "C" which is the signal, and the Black wire which is labelled "G" which is ground.
You may now reassemble the recorder. I then proceeded to assemble a new interconnecting cable to run from my a/d microphone preamplifier which I had previously modified with a locking spdif connector so that I will have locking connectors on both ends of the cable preventing unintended disconnections when people inadvertently bump into you at concerts during the show. This has happened on more than a few occasions and is very aggravating as it obviously causes a gap in the recording.
The cable assembly took longer than expected as it requires 28 gauge wire or smaller to fit into the solder cups on the pins of the connector which we did not have at the time of assembly. I was attempting to use RG179B shielded coax and the center conductor was ok' however when using a smaller number of strands from the shield of the coax the wire could not handle any stress at all. Lemo happens to make a special cable which has three conductors and is shielded which is designed specifically for use with this connector which I am ordering on Monday. I had a short piece of it provided as a sample which in hind sight I should have purchased ahead of time but things do not always go as planned!
We were able to verify that the recorder modification does in fact work correctly and all that remains is to complete the cable assemblies later next week and I will be a happy camper once again. I have included some photographs for others to see what the internals of the recorder look like and how the modification looks installed on the DR100 MKII.
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^ Very nice, thank you!
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Awesome stuff.
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If anyone needs spare TRRS/RCA adapter cables I have three of them available that I will no longer be needing as I have replaced the connector on my DR100 MKII with the LEMO connector that I outlined in the post previously. I would like to get $10.00 for all three cables and can ship them to you in a bubble wrap padded envelope. It is always nice to have a spare cable as a back-up as these are not an off the shelf part at your local parts store.
Send me an email if interested or call me directly if you prefer at 212-254-3541.