And turning up the heat! Today's special guest is the Boss DR-550, harkening back to the heady days of the early 1990s.
It naturally arrived in an unserviceable condition, which naturally I rectified.
One thing I didn't cover in the video was repairing the heat-staked posts that hold the copper foil shielding to the inside of the case.
Or at least should be holding the copper foil to the inside of the case. They're these little plastic nubbins, 6 in total, that go through a matching set of holes in the shielding and then get melted down to form a plastic rivet of sorts.
But as you might well imagine, that little melted head of plastic doesn't last forever, especially when the unit is subject to disassembly.
But luckily I have a 3d pen, and so I can rebuild what was once there.
I can glob on a bit of melted ABS-compatible plastic, ASA in this case, and then squish it flat to reproduce the original rivet.
It's a little bit tricky, though. The plastic needs to be pretty hot to melt into the remains of the post, and it needs to be squished down fairly flat with a suitable tool; I used the blunt bottom end of a metal x-acto knife holder for this task.
And one thing I didn't count on was the 3d pen having a hard time reaching into corners, particularly the back corner (not shown) where there's a screw post that hides the heat stake rivet and makes for a very tight fit with the 3d pen. I was only partially successful at repairing those ones, but luckily it only really needs to be mostly held in place, so it's fine.
So how does this drum machine sound, you might ask, now that it's all fixed up? Well, let's just say that this particular device has never been burdened by having to carry the weight of ambition or pretension. It makes drum noises, and it does so on the cheap. But still, it has some charm to it.
