Hi, The Trident 65 is a board prone to all kinds of problems with power and ground issues ect. What are your symptoms, what do you want to spend and what are you going to do with this board?

GB

Thank you for responding. I really need some assitance.

I just built a new structure and planned to get back into recording. Nothing fancy just basic open space with standard wiring. The building is right next to my home (like a detached garage) I've encountered a number of hums and very loud intermittent ossilating buzzes, pops etc. Nothing in the building should be creating this noise. We're talking really unique stuff. The power supply for the board itself now hums. Unfortunately there isn't a tech for 500 miles. I've been working through basic grounding issues with the electrician and replacing studio wiring and reviewing conection etc. My patch bay is from a time when I was all analog I now use ProTools.so my first thought was balanced to unbalanced issues, but even with everything but the board and the power amp unplugged I still have major issues. I now I think it's the board. I received advice from someone who said they were a tech to pull the cards and clean the connections I pulled the Master fader because it appeared that this was were some of the issues were. All connections look brand new. After I replaced the card the master mute, Tape returns and master volume control stopped working. I've unplugged and replugged the card at least a dozen times but everything just runs through the master fader. The mix select and the master volume pot and mute have no effect. Again the "tech" said it might be a bad "op amp" (I have no clue) So now I'm totally dead. I love the board but it's twenty years old and without tech support I'm lost. I'm to the point where I'm considering a new board. What I would like to do with the studio is track live bands. I would typically run 6 tracks for drums, bass, 2 for keys, guitar and scratch vocal into summed group outputs into ProTools as my intial tracks and then overdub. I really appreciate your thoughts. Thanks again John Cal 775 233 9990

Hi John Cal, Well it sounds as though you have at least two or three issues with the board and some other interconnect problems as well. It's time to "divide and conquer". The first thing you should do is discnnect everything from the board and listen to each channel with headphones plugged directly into the board. (You will have to deal with the master issue first or last, see below) This should show you which channels are the big offenders as far as the intermittant buzzes, pops and oscillations. then either "shotgun everything"(see below) or just replace parts on the cards that are causing the problems. (Knowing that in the future you will probably have to deal with the cards you didn't "shotgun")

When you say the power supply is humming, do you mean that it's emitting a loud mechanical type noise directly or is it cuasing hum on your signal bus?

The intermittant pops and buzzes are probably coming from bad coupling or decoupling capacitors either on the channel cards or on the master, although op amps can also be this noisey. These can be a royal pain to replace if you've never tackled card repair before, but with practice it's quite easy assuming you can solder and desolder well. Most techs including myself usually "shotgun the board". By that I mean replace every electrolytic cap and every op amp in the mix signal path with an improved spec device. When I do this I use a higher grade of cap with a temp rating of 105C and better end seals. These can run two or three times the price of 85C caps but the payoff is they probably will last a lot longer than the originals did. If your on a tight budget just use the cheaper ones because the higher temp rating usally just means they will last longer.

The Trident 65 has a relative weak ground scheme and power distribution grid. This weak ground scheme in particular made these boards marginal when they were new. Beefing those up would be a great mod for you and anyone who has one. You could spend a lot of time doing this and it would lower your noise floor, but I think you just want to make this board fully functional and get rid of the weird noises.

I typically will replace every op amp with an improved spec device on these older boards because it is usually means a good improvement on the noise level being summed. I use a lot of 4580's these days but the Burr-Brown OPA602ap are good for use in your stereo master fader. You most likely don't need to replace any but one or two op amps to make your board fully functional again. The replace 'em all "shotgtun" is just for lowering the noise floor and improve the freq response.

I am puzzled why your master mute, tape returns and master volume stopped working. Pulling a card usually won't cause an op amp to go bad unless you try it with the board powered up- yikes, don't ever do that! If that's what happened replace those op amps and it may start working again.

Now for your power supply. Your caps in there most likely need replacement so go ahead and do that with identical values or something slightly larger.

Now for the disclaimer: making this board be what you want it to be for your situation may be an exercise in futility. For instance if you want to track live all the time I suggest you get something smaller and lighter. There are lots of good boards available for less than $1500 that would fill your need. If you pm or e me I could give you some options for repair as well.
good luck and good afternoon