It's high time for some shoddy photography. (Apologies, it was clearly not my day for running a camera, though I certainly don't feel like reshooting this as imagery is secondary to the process)


Enter the Ramsa 8210. For years this thing sat on a shelf in a back room at the music store I worked at over a decade ago. Even then it lured me a bit, but for one reason or other never made me reach for my wallet (probably because I already HAD a mixer and was/am perpetually broke).

During the big move it went home with a friend to start a new life.


But it would seem that all was not well in mixer land, the several year lapse in use (I reckon easily a decade) had done damage to the switchery..


Reducing the preferred characteristic of plug and play (most beneficial when dealing with creativity) into a hammer party of exercising the moving parts with varying degrees of success.


Meanwhile, the electronic side of things had also decayed in the rut of disuse..


Which would explain the fact that when I picked this console up as potential trade fodder it wore a VOC odor of ruptured electronics in the same way some people wear perfume. I actually had to roll my windows down on the drive home to tolerate it resting in the passenger seat.


1 out of 3 is not bad. In all likelihood, the capacitors had dried up beyond use during the many years of neglect; application of power just made them fragrant.


In doing some initial investigation regarding this family of mixer I found some pockets of praise, so there's encouragement to fix it beyond my own simmering curiosity. In working on it I am seriously considering ousting the RCA phono type connector for the more instrument friendly 1/4" phone plug.


All rear connectors are contained on a separate circuit board card, making a jack retrofit rather trivial (once the channel strips are removed for recap). Hopefully they can be fitted without interference.