Mayfly on the Bench - Repair of a SR&D Rockman!

[mayfly]

The latest video.  Just for Aaron!

[youtube]https://youtu.be/o02qRsUvMbk[/youtube]

 

[Logrinn]

Great video as usual :icon_thumright:

 

[mayfly]

Thanks man!  I'm just glad that someone besides the client watches these things 

 

[PhilHill]

Nice job, both on the repair and the vid. I was waiting for a BTO song, but that's alright. Nice watch too................. :headbang:

 

[mayfly]

.... I actually don't know any BTO!!!  (oh the shame!)

 

[PhilHill]

.... I actually don't know any BTO!!!  (oh the shame!)

  ............We will never speak of this again................... :laughing7: :laughing7:

 

[Rick]

Cool, when I hear Mayfly play the box, I hear Boston.  The client will be really happy.

 

[aarontunes]

At 5:04 when you said "Let's get some Double A's and see if this works" I was half-expecting my phone to ring. Then you proceeded to load 987 AA batteries in there, and I was like "dang."


That's amazing....perfect Tom Scholtz tone at the flick of a single switch. I don't have the original, but I have the successor, the X100B or whatever it was called. It no longer works either.


Pretty cool that you were able to source the (almost) exact part after all this time. I bet whoever you fixed it for will be pretty happy with that.

 

[mayfly]

Thanks man!  Let me know if you want me to fix yours 

 

[swarfrat]

We're on crystolic fusion here nowadays

 

[ejm]

5-21-2021

I just posted in another topic discussion related to this.
It has "Rockman" in the title.

 

[Tim Escobedo]

I've had one since the late 80s. Got it second hand. They were kind of pricey at the time. The part that gave me headaches was the weird little bent metal cam actuator on the 4 position slider that would turn on another hidden internal slide switch that slides in a 90 degree angle from the direction the externally accessible switch.

The circuit itself is very clever and rather complicated. It has the clean to hi gain section, heavy eq, compression, chorus and bbd reverb(that chip possibly the single most expensive component of the whole unit).

Despite Scholz's mechanical engineering skills, the Rockman had some fragility flaws, which I think probably come from the need to keep the price down, and keep the whole unit as compact as possible. As a result, that internal switch was oriented at an angle that needed a cam to operate, and the cam relied on the tightness and rigidity (that it didn't have) of a flexy plastic enclosure to work. If the unit hadn't sounded so awesome, it would have been a forgotten failure.