I’m happy to report that the heavy construction work on my studio is complete. All the drywall has been hung, sanded and painted (except for a section near the service panel… if I drywall there, then I can’t add other electrical lines, so that part will be left bare for awhile). I laid the last of the flooring a few days ago. The maintenance and engineering dept, aka my workbench, has been built and is ready to work. Now I’ve got to figure out the best place to put all my stuff.
Almost as soon as I got my bench finished, I turned my attention to the mixer. I’ve discovered much more than the “few issues” that I was told about when I bought it. The good news is that nearly all the input channels are functional… one channel wasn’t connected, so that was easily corrected, and number 26 has a bad HPF switch and only works when the filter is active. And the power supply does have new capacitors in it.
The bad news is the master section has got a number of very mysterious problems, with no obvious or easily traceable causes. I think the best course of action here is to send it off to Creation Audio Labs in Nashville to see if they can sort it out. I expect to be sending them a lot of work over the next few months, but I plan to break it up into installments and have them do the work as I can afford it.
The next job on my work list will be to build a cabinet to house the mixer and equipment racks for the outboard gear. I’ve designed a desk that I can build for about $150 or so, it’s just a matter of getting the plywood and slicing it up.
Lots of other finish work remains… installing double glass in the window & trimming that out, treating the door for sound isolation, etc. I expect that to take awhile yet. And I’ll need to buy an air conditioner before the heat of the summer starts up in earnest. But it’s very nearly a useable space right now, which is an enjoyable feeling.
Update: By replacing a voltage regulator in the power supply, I was able to correct a mysterious problem with the LED meters where it would only illuminate in segments of five LEDs… as the signal increased, the lower five LEDs would go dark while the next segment lit up. Very odd. Channel 26 was repaired with a copious squirt of contact cleaner. Next on the list is a rather large order for capacitors from Mouser… there’s room on the boards to increase the voltage and temperature rating.
BGilbertSound 
Hi Brian!
I stumbled onto your site today… From your post yesterday, I see that you are (STUDIO WISE) where I was this time last year… making furniture!
Good luck on your building project. I was searching dbx 900 mods, and found your site, I love your 900 rack, and would love to ask you a few detailed questions if you have the time, and are interested in sharing your knowledge… ( I am most interested in the best way to connect the 900 to/thru my patchbays, so they are wired in conveniently, what caught my eye was your patchbay above the 900.)
If you would like to converse, send me an email, if not, Best wishes & God Bless!
Thanks
bf
Hi Barry:
The way we wired our 900 rack (all of our outboard effects, actually) to our patchbays in the past was outputs on the top row, inputs on the bottom… the signal “flows like water,” so to speak. The Behringer patchbays are a pretty good buy, as long as they’ll hold up. My mixer didn’t come with a dedicated patchbay, unfortunately, so that’s going to make things a little harder for me. I’ll need another patchbay for mixer ins and outs, and that will have all the subgroups, the masters, and a few input channels connected there. That’s the basic idea… but I’ll be making it up as I go along, and will likely change wiring a bit after I start using the system and better ways to do things present themselves. Best, BG