Ok, wife's away, time for the taper geek to play. Spent some time this afternoon working on the SBM1 I picked up recently. Gave it a good going over with modifications. 3 to be exact:
1)
Coax output mod. I've done a few of these, and always seem to be doing something different. For my original one, and for one for jbk, I added a female RCA coax out on the (cutoff) 7pin dongle. For Tim (now in the hands of Scott from the CO Crew), I put RCA coax jack right into the side of the SBM1, so there was no cable at all. I really like this option, but it was a pain to do, and the way it is wired up, you'd need to unwire the coax output to pull the SBM1 guts out to work on it -- which seemed like a pain. This time around, I followed leegeddy's route and totally took out the 7 pin dongle and replaced it with a coax cable with a male RCA plug on the end. I didn't have the right raw 75ohm digital cable lying around, so I used a hacked 75 ohm video cable that I did have in the junk box.
2)
Optical out mod. Did this based on the input of Doug Oade:
http://www.oade.com/Tapers_Section/Forum/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=105&topic_id=119&mode=fullThis should be real nice when using the SBM1 with a JB3. Once again, it's not like I planned ahead to do this stuff, so it was time to rustle up an optical transmitter. Pulled one out of my Aopen 850D digital soundcard daughterboard. I'm only using the coax out on this, so I figured it was a likely culprit to steal from. A little de-soldering later, I had my transmitter. Needed a 0.1uf capacitor, and found one I could steal from an old car amp I've been cannabalizing in the junk box in the garage. Really that is all that is necessary in the way of parts. Since the SBM1 was already totally disassembled from the coax mod, I just needed to take out the 7 pin socket off the main board and then replace it with the optical transmitter. Wiring it up was a bit tedious due to the size of things, but there is just enough room to get the wires and cap in there. I needed to file the opening on the case just a tad more and use some epoxy to hold it in place, but the transmitter I stole from the soundcard was a pretty good fit.
3)
Line stage upgrade mod. The same mod I've done now to several SBM1's now. My take on the line stage (analog stage) upgrade that Doug Oade does. Upgrades the line input of the SBM1 so it sounds nicer. I really should figure out who all has these ToddR-modSBM1's or who had them. I pretty sure COtaper Zach still has one, though I haven't seen him out taping for 3 years. My original one I did for myself has found it's way back home and Simpy owns it, though Tim is going to be using it. Did one for JBK that he promptly got rid of, don't know to whom. And I did one for Mr. Twister, and god knows where that has gotten to after he sold it. I wouldn't mind getting some feedback from those who have run it on how they think it sounds.
Sorry, I didn't take any pictures along the way, though leegeddy has excellent ones of the coax mod in the archives (+T for those Marc!). Below are a couple shots of the coax mod and the optical mod.
Topic: Woohoo!! Optical/Coax/Line-Stage modSBM1 now complete! (Read 10150 times)