Restoring discoloured plastic on a Tascam Portastudio ... First attempt!
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- Опубліковано 4 лип 2024
- Here is a diary I kept as I made my first foray into "retrobriting" - the process of lightening plastics which have become dull, discoloured or stained due to exposure to sunlight, tobacco smoke, etc.
In the video I'm likghtening the pale grey plastic knobs and buttons from a Tascam Portastudio 424 Mk III by submerging them in peroxide in a transparent plastic container, then leaving the container in a windowsill so the UV ciontent of ordinary sunlight will react with the peroxide to bleach out the staining of the plastic's surface.
I have seen poeple paint a thinner layer of peroxide onto stained plastics, cover the palstic with cling film and use a UV lamp of the sort used to cure nail varnish. ..You might prefer to use those methods depening on the size of the plastic you're working with. Clearly you'd need a huge container, windowsill, and a lot more perroxide to treat an entire portastudio case the way I'm doing it!
Please note that you should probably have protecticve gloves on and clingfilm down on your working surface when you work with peroxide, since it does produce a mild chemical burn in direct contact with your skin. In my case it was onyl slightly uncomfrotable and dissapeared within 24 hours, but other skin types may react differently, and even if your skin is more resilient to this chemical, I reckon its worth avoiding!
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Nice one they came up good
I’ve used the retro brite goo on Tektronix lab instruments from that era. I like the liquid in a tray idea. Much quicker to get the surfaces covered.
For the light I bought cheap “3-D printed figurine curing” UV lamps. Worked well and they could stay on 24-7, and no matter what the weather.
Wow, that’s a dramatic improvement!
Yeah. Dead easy and cheap too. Feel like a bit of a muppet for not adopting the practice earlier!
Looks really good man. You do great work.
Why thank you!
Very helpful, thank you!
Glad to help, thanks for watching 👀 🙏
This is fun
If only it worked on tattoos!! *BA -DUM-PSH*
That worked pretty well!
Not too shabby!
Do you happen to know any way to source these poti heads? I have a few cracked ones I'd like to replace
nice one callum. decent result with the peroxide- ive seen people do the same in the past with old keyboards that had yellowed keys.
Yeah, I've watched a few console and vintage computer refurbishment videos where a similar approach was taken.
damn that worked perfect. I just got a fostex x-18 for a steal. the switches and knobs are mostly black but are gunked up with cigarette tar so im gonna try this. it didn't run, only turned on, but I took a chance and it was only a broken belt. almost works perfect, now I found input 1 and 2 cut in and out when you jiggle the cable. fingers crossed that its just some cold solder points I need to re-solder and not something out of my wheelhouse. I also ordered some deoxit F5 to clean all the faders and pots while im removing all the boards to get to the input solder points. pray for me 😆
Sending thoughts and prayers!
@@Tetrakan just in case you ever have this issue on an x-18 your repairing I read the manual! input 1 and 2 on the x 18 have a switch I guess to activate those preamps, it’s like two tiny plastic white things that the 3 and 4 don’t have cause they’re only line level. I just sprayed some deoxit in the switch and put a cable in and out a few times to flip it, and bam, perfect signal. I’m glad I didn’t need to check the the inputs cause they board is under everything.
Almost all the way fixed 😂. Now I have found another problem that hopefully I can diagnose and fix. I record to track 1, 3 and 4 fine but when I record to track 2 it records whatever’s was recorded to track 1, 3 and 4 along with the new signal.
@@Tetrakanso track 2 not only records what’s already recorded on the other tracks, it also doesn’t erase whatever was there when you record. Does this issue sound fixable? Also, Do you maybe have any forums or Reddit threads that have repair info on the cause I can’t seem to ask the right question on google to find any 😂 .
Oh wow. I have the exact same yellow tint on my knobs and I thought that this is how they came out the factory !
Nope, it's that rascal the sun, ruining shit as usual!
The theory/science I found is that sun, and even fluorescent lights cause this. Evidently in the 80’s and 90’s bromine (naturally brown) was used to stabilize the plastic curing. Certain kinds of light cause the bromine to leech to the surface over time.