If you are primarily a musician, composer or producer, it may never have occurred to you that even without specialist electronics technical know-how, you too can repair equipment.
You may have some faulty gear on a shelf, or have seen something on ebay that has some minor faults. Many faults have obvious fixes and providing you are patient, can use a soldering iron and de-soldering tool, you may be able to bring a piece of gear back to life for very little cost.
Here's our top tips:
1) If you see a piece of gear on eBay listed as spares or repairs with a clear diagnosis of the fault in its description, phone the manufactures spares department and request a service manual. They will usually email you a PDF. Identify the parts then phone them and ask if they have them in stock, and how much they are.
2) Consider buying 2 identical devices with different faults, and creating one good unit from them.
3) Use your smartphone to take photos of the device as you dismantle it.
4) It's surprisingly easy to re-spray a case that is scratched. Satin finish black car paint works well and you can mask off areas with insulation or masking tape.
5) Although some parts will be specially designed and manufactured, such as ICs, many other are standard (such as resistors, potentiometers and capacitors) and can be bought from any electronics component supplier.
6) Some faults cannot easily be repaired so don't invest too much money in your repair unless you are certain it will succeed. Even if you can't repair the device, chances are there will be someone else willing to buy it for their own repair project.
Thanks for reading
FairFax
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