It lives! The PRE BMX III

I have just finished putting back together this PRE BMX III console.

PRE BMXIII analog audio console, reassembled
PRE BMXIII analog audio console reassembled

We basically ripped the guts out of this unit and in doing so, I was reminded of how well these things are built.  The PRE BMX series consoles were truly wonders of audio engineering.  It is a testament to their ruggedness and serviceability that so many of these units are still in use twenty to thirty years after they were manufactured.

This console suffered some pretty bad water damage to the backplane:

PRE BMXIII module backplane
PRE BMXIII module backplane

Which was replace, along with many switches and buttons.  The Mic2, Mic3 and CD1 modules seemed to have taken most of the damage, there were several logic ICs and IC sockets that needed to be replaced on those modules.  Of course, this was not inexpensive; the parts were somewhere north of $3K plus about 40 man hours of labor… that adds up fast.

The good news, I think that the studio was back in service last night.