Topic: Edirol R-09 - Still struggling with jack issue

[tbirdbuzz]

I finally got my R-09 recorder apart to see what's going on with the input jack.  I procrastinated until the day before the show that I wanted to tape before deciding to bite the bullet and dive in.  The hardest part was figuring out how to get the back plastic part off to expose the third screw for the entire back piece.  It turns out that apply even prying-pressure with my nails did the trick. It was easy as that. 

            I did notice that the solder job on the jack was crappy so I melted the old solder and hit it with new.  Unfortunantely, it did not fix the problem. When the plug is inserted into the jack and wiggled the plug,  it caused a huge noise spike .  They are not as frequent as before, but it will still happen if it is wiggled just right (as when it is in my pocket). I opened it up and re-flowed the solder on all four pads, but no luck. Is the entire jack bad or is it another problem?  Thanks.

[Gutbucket]

The only sucessful fix I've heard of is having the circucuit board replaced.  Barring that, switch to using the other input jack.  When original R-09 jacks were failing early on, some of us epoxied the jacks to the board to reinforce them and prevent failure, but that was with a working jack.

[runonce]

Wasn't this a common failure point for this device?

Like - most people sooner or later experienced it...?

As I recall - this isnt the kind of solder your average DIY guy can work with...?

[Gutbucket]

It was a problem with the early machines. I had one that failed, switched to using the other jack, opened it up and the SMD stuff was too small to work with and the traces were lifted anyway, eventually sent it back to Edirol and they replaced the board under warranty.  Upon return I epoxied it as a precautionary measure.  I bought a second machine after they had addressed the inital problem and never bothered to open it up and epoxy that one.  Both are still going strong 6 years on.

[yousef]

Please could we share some serial numbers for known bad and good era R09s?

Never had any problems with mine and only use it occasionally nowadays but it would be good to get an idea of whether I should do the epoxy job on it.

[Gutbucket]

If you are concerned about failure, open it up and epoxy away.   You might check the R-09 threads from 5 years ago to see if there were serial numbers mentioned.  One was called 'how to open an R-09' or somthing like that.  I know I posted photos of the boards, the jacks and the epoxying.  I'll try to remember and check the SNs of mine and post them here for you, but not sure that will really help much.. I'm pretty sure the second one I bought was built after Edirol addressed the issue, but really I'm only certain that it hasn't had a jack problem.

[yousef]

You're right - I should just open it up and fix the jack in place.

It doesn't take much for me to crack out the epoxy resin - I love that stuff.