Studio Maintainance?

[r0ck1r0ck2]

I'm looking for tek stuff here....Defrag Drives
DeOxit on the connections...
Optical I/O?

what to do so your gear Dosen't breakdown and require surgery....?

anyone have any good ideas...

[Tibbon]

Truthfully, it depends on what equipment you have, and what period you are looking at doing this stuff.

Here's a few ideas (I don't have experience with ALL of them, so a few of my details may be blurry). Some of them are just daily things that you should be doing in any commercial studio (Cleaning your tape machine)

- Clean Multitrack and 2 track tape machines
- Calibrate same machines
- Check heads to see if they need relapped or replaced, if they do... do it!
- Replace any/all HDs that have been in (heavy) service for over 2 years.
- Clean optical drives
- If you have any vintage mics, get them looked over and perhaps the capsules cleaned (I haven't had this done, but I could imagine a 50 year old U47 might need it).
- Replace worn/microphonic cabling
- Clean the patchbay with solution of choice and methods of choice
- Do the same with any other used I/O panels
- Calibrate all machines that could possibly need it from I/O trims on convertors to the CV inputs on your Eventide 910
- Clean any dustbunnies around powersupplies with fans and such (Digi192 and computers come to mind)
- Clean the computer mouse and keyboard
- Clean your faders as appropriate
- Clean any pots on your console/other gear
- Does your console or other gear need recapped?
- Rehead all drums and tune (yes you can tune drums)
- Restring all guitars and tune
- Get the piano tuned
- Oil the B3/Love the B3
- Tune the Rhodes and any other keyboards that you might have
- Clean any popfilters, and spray with Lysol (away from the mics please!)
- Retube things that need it. Make sure to rebias as needed afterwards.

Defragging your hard drive... I dunno, I never do that to my drives (OS X doesn't really need it that much) but on a PC I know it's a weekly thing at least. There are some things that are really basic like cleaning the glass between the CR and live room that your interns (or you) should do daily anyway. Clean the floor if they aren't clean. Dust will kill your equipment.

Also, maybe this is just me, but each week in a commercial studio, and maybe more this time of year, I like to lysol the whole place wherever people would be touching stuff (light switches, door handles, etc). Colds make your ears useless often, which makes you and your studio useless.

All of these things of course need to be done as they are needed, and not all weekly, and some not yearly even. I haven't seen many good books on studio maintence.

[Tibbon]

Originally Posted by r0ck1r0ck2

.... and require surgery....?

anyone have any good ideas...

Actually, nothing about you, but this part bothers me about much modern gear. So few things come with full schematics or calibration manuals. I was blown away when I bought my Eventide 910s and they came with amazing manuals that showed how to do everything right down to schematics and drawings of how the PLLs work!

Good gear shouldn't need MUCH surgery (well except consoles and tape machines), but when it does I wish the standard manual told a little more like they used to! It's part of the reason I hate some many Uber-Digital pieces of gear. They either aren't fixable by someone that isn't trained by that company, or even if they were they don't give the manuals to do so! I have had to work trying to fix two drum machines over the past week without service manuals and its driving me up a wall!

[r0ck1r0ck2]

thanks Tibbon...!
you stomp...

anyone else wanna give some maintenance tips?
oh please?

[outtolunch]

Searching in Amazon I've found

Recording Studio Technology, Maintenance, and Repairs : Everything You Need to Properly Care for Your Equipment by Tom McCartney

(http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/007...books&v=glance)

Anybody knows it? Opinions?

Thanks!

[stevep]

Tibbon - Clean the patchbay with solution of choice and methods of choice

What would be your choice ......... This was an ongoing thing for me even with the switchcraft and ADC bays. I could use some help here.

[orange]

i wonder if unecessary maintance is sometimes a bad thing.

Cleaning faders and switches when they don't need it for example. Or doing an 'abrasive' type patchbay clean etc etc

but then I'm lazy and so its a good excuse not to do anything

- I agree with the 'keeping the studio clean' ethos...a good vacuum every now and again etc etc.

[Tibbon]

Originally Posted by orange

i wonder if unecessary maintance is sometimes a bad thing.

Cleaning faders and switches when they don't need it for example. Or doing an 'abrasive' type patchbay clean etc etc

but then I'm lazy and so its a good excuse not to do anything

- I agree with the 'keeping the studio clean' ethos...a good vacuum every now and again etc etc.

For regular cleaning of the faders... get a small handheld vaccum and go over them.

[nukmusic]

What about cleaning mics? or resoldering lose connections??

[Riad]

Wiping the drool off the snare drum?

[nukmusic]

Originally Posted by Riad

Wiping the drool off the snare drum?

LMAO....u sure it's drool? the snare sit pretty low.