I have had two different 388s that had “channels not working” in one fashion or another, that ended up having a bad fader, that kind of sounds like what track 4 has. It’s a long shot...but it is a free easy thing to try that takes 10 minutes. Pull the bottom off, unscrew and unplug / swap fader with a known good channel.wicknykids wrote: ↑Wed Jan 20, 2021 1:01 pmHeyy, first post here, thanks to everybody who's contributed to this thread in the past, I've read through all 37 pages of it.
So I am borrowing a 388 from a friend who is "borrowing" it from his friend who probably forgot about it. This thing hasn't been used probably for at least 8 years, but possibly way more than that. I'm really not an electronics guy, I don't have a soldering iron or any way to test parts but I've done a bunch of preliminary contact cleaning on the insides as well as the heads and reseating the cards like this thread explains. I haven't yet done any swapping of the cards though.
At first it appears that all the tracks record my test tone except 4 and 7 but when I put the tape on backwards there is no playback on track 2 (which matches with 7) and also strangely track 4 (weird that track 5 plays what was recorded onto track 4 before...)
So track 4 DOES record but doesn't playback from tape and Track 7 doesn't seem to record but DOES playback from tape. This is this same whether I record using the mixer or use the PGM inputs in the back. Tape outputs demonstrate the same.
Do these problems ring bells with anyone? Any other tricks I can try before I either give up and use it as a 6 track for the time being or maybe try to find a willing tech in the Philly area?
Thanks for reading...
You should also test whether either of the bad channels can record to a good channel, and vice versa..