Restoring The Fostex Model 350 Recording Mixer

Last week I got me a really cheap Fostex 350 Recording mixer. My plan was simply to get something temporary to replace my borrowed Mackie Onyx 1620. Not that I thought this was a good replacement but something to keep me going. Already when I saw the ad for the Fostex it looked dirty and it was without any guarantees of working condition. But I thought it was worth the chance since it was not far away and it costed only about $50.

When I got it home it sounded all but good. Loads of noise from the pots and switches. To be honest I wasn't that pleased even to the low price and instead the Traynor 6400 that I got more or less for free ($15 extra) caught my interest. But that one wouldn't do as my everyday mixer.

Therefore I got into restoring the Fostex to some kind of usable condition. I took of the cover and all the controls and gave them a proper cleaning (fortunately I do not spend every friday night showering an old Fostex). The insides of the mixer also got quite some amount of contact cleaner to get rid of the noise. All had to be done from the top of the mixer since the bottom was covered with a giant circuit-board, glad I didn't have to do anything with that.

When both the inside and outside seemed fairly clean I simply put it together and connected the most important gear. It took a while to tort out where to set all the switches and even where to connect my amplifier and the iPhone I use for recording. But when I finally figured everything out, after consulting the manual, it really sounded quite nice. Compared to the Mackie it sounded kind of thick and it handled all the frequencies of my Solina String Ensemble through my DOD Phaser. Something I never really got that good in the Mackie. I'm really looking forward to record something with it to see how it can affect the final mix. Haven't thought to much about analog/digital or preamps in mixers before. But thinking about it, why wouldn't it matter.

Right now it feels really nice to be limited to 8 channels and it sure looks like a dream after cleaning ;-)