Aging DP-32 Blues

[-mjk-]

Took my DP-32 out of the carry bag to use it today and found 1/2 of an input knob on the bottom of the bag. The knobs are all deteriorating, including the fader caps. It looks like I have a new set of everything in my future because once that starts happening it really can't be stopped. I use mine mainly as a field recorder these days and it's still such a fantastic unit (especially the original ones like mine, with MIDI). Taiwan is notorious for disintegrating plastics and the DP-32 has not escaped this inevitability.

 

[shredd]

How odd. I also have an O/G ‘32 w MIDI…plastics are fine. Must be the weather there - unless of course it’s a manufacturing conspiracy by china to break the morale of the Taiwanese by sabotaging the production of units for that country?!?

 

[-mjk-]

The latter. I bought the unit in The Netherlands but somehow Tascam knew.

The weather is sub-tropical with it being tropical below the Tropic of Cancer (which cuts across Taiwan). Most plastics degrade in a few years.

 

[shredd]

Thas’ a dragg alright. I never realized a tropical climate would do that to plastics. Or it is something else? Temps? Pollution?

 

[Mark Richards]

Sorry to hear that, mj. Humidity is a killer. Even where I am in TN, the humidity has been way above normal year round, and my DP-24's knobs have become sticky on top. I haven't yet found a solution. There may not be one. At least TASCAM should be able to provide replacements easily.

 

[shredd]

TASCAM should be able to provide replacements easily

I'mma gonna say that this is probably the weakest feature of Tascam (and a lot of other co's that make MTR's and other gear): they make it painfully difficult to access/acquire even the simplest replacement parts.
I'm not talking circuit board parts and chips; I'm talking knobs, power supplies, etc. It's like you have to haveta have a replacement slider knob approved and designed by NASA, and then requisition funding through congress.

One of the reasons I've been on the MTR bandwagon for a lotta years is that they tend to be pretty reliable (way more than the DAW/puter-based recording setups I've tried!). I've never had one flake out/go bad, either from s/ware issues or mechanical/control failure, let alone component failure. Knock on wood!