So, after doing some reading on the old www, I decided to buy a service manual online for a few bucks just to see what exactly I was up against. I’m not an electronics tech but I’ve torn apart enough consumer electronics over the years to know how to take some screws out and hopefully remember where to reinstall them.
Anyways, below is my project to get the XLR mic input working again
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Note to Roland: Why not engineer the speaker wiring to be about 8” longer so one can remove the electronics without the need to remove speakers just to get things in the open? Sure it saves on the front end costs, but it wasted a few minutes of my time to have to dink with that oversite. Must have been the project of an summer engineering intern.
I assure you that I took no proper grounding precautions nor is my carpet rug not full of static electricity. But a swipe of the cat across the electronics should help with any of those issues right?
I think the problem is in this xlr combo jack by itself. Tweaking and yanking on a little bit yielded positive results in getting the jack to work correctly. So I think I can rule out anything later in the signal path. I was able to get my cheap mic working without the need to turn the mic and master vol’s up to 11. I was also able to get my SE2200ac to fire up and mic as it should also after giving the board a tech tweak.
What I find quite sad from reading the components breakdown in the manual is the fact that this tiny little XLR board is not a service part in itself but only available with the Main circuit board assembly. (See picture below of the main board). From a service standpoint its dumb since the mic input board is not built onto the main board but only attached by the main wire connector plug. I guess its a good design for Roland so they can sell you 500$ in replacement parts you don’t need.
Luckily there is a brand name tattooed to the XLR combo jack so I think I may be able to just buy the jack and solder a new one in, crossing my fingers that is the only problem. Now I just have to go through Neutricks catalog to match up the correct jack assembly. One thing that I found on their site is a nice little cover cap for these jacks so that crap doesn’t settle in the hole when its sitting in the corner.
So, off to the Neutrik site to see what I can find and to try and get this working better than Roland could.