Serious Metal Job on Sony DPS Series

Recently I bought this very nice set of Sony DPS Effect Processors. I found them all in one batch. The Sony DPS-D7 is a very nice delay, the DPS-R7 a very good reverb, the DPS-M7 is a modulator and the DPS-F7 is a Filter unit that also does EQ, compression and limiting. If you see them in this picture they look quite OK, but they didn't arrive in this state unfortunately. I think the courier that transported them ran over them with a truck or dropped them from a flat or something.

Well this was the state they arrived in. You can probably imagine how I felt when I took them out of the box. The stuff was packed in bubble plastic, so normally you would suspect it should withstand some handling. But this must have been hit with a tremendous amount of force by a blunt object. The front panels are made of aluminum so I can imagine that they bend easily, but behind the rack ears is some steel reinforcement. And they were bent as well. The first thing I did is take them off. I had to apply a lot of force to bend them to 90 degrees again.

After that I completely took them apart so that I could remove the front panels. Then with a soft hammer I worked on the aluminum to bend it straight again. That worked out quite OK. The only thing you see now it that the paint is gone is some places. But in this pictures up close with flash it looks way worse that you would normally see. But I'm going to try to use some black paint to fill up the spots. But after reassembling and checking everything on the inside was in one piece I focused first on another thing. Testing! I was very curious if everything still worked. And you won't believe it no problems at all :) Sony build these things like a tank I guess. After this I contacted the E-bay seller and showed him the pictures. He was not happy, well neither am I. He is trying to get the damage paid by the courier. We'll see what happens. Thanks mr. Courier. Oh Parcel Force is the name ;) Don't use them!