Eventide H8000 Back from USA

My H8000 was broken a while ago and I have tried to repair it myself, but didn't really succeed. Eventually I decided to sent it to Eventide in the USA to let them have a look and they found that the socket for the main processor was loose. This seems to be a common problem, so they desoldered the socket from the PCB and soldered the SMD mounted main processor directly on the PCB. Besides that they also repaired the big dial knob on the front panel. Last week I got it back and I started playing around with it. Man what a machine this is. I wouldn't want to miss it again. I bought an Eventide H4000DSP in the mean to fill in the gap. It has a couple of the same presets. Now that the H8000 is back I'm going to sell the H4000DSP again.

Eventide H8000 Problems

Last year I got an Eventide H8000 from E-bay. In my opinion one of the best Sound Effect Processors on Earth. Unfortunately in the beginning it worked fine, but after a while it started to do a bit weird. It started with the display that is very bright when it starts up and after a while it changes color. Important? No, but strange it is. So far I could live with that. Then it started losing its ADAT settings everytime I switch it off. So each time I have to reconfigure them when I switch in on and the strange thing is that it is all correct in the menu.

So I just re-apply the same settings and it works again. I mailed with  Eventide tech support about this and they had no idea. The only tip they had is to open it up and check the battery and reapply all the mechanical interconnects, like connectors and IC sockets. Well and today also the jog shuttle stopped working. So today I decided to have a look at it. I took it from the rack and opened it up. Well in the picture you can see a H8000 from the inside. The Battery was under the ADAT interface, so I took that out first. And measured the battery. It was 3 Volts like it should be.

Anything below 2.8 Volts could be a problem they said and that is obviously not the case. I decided to remove the battery for a while to make sure the memory was completely empty. And then I reapplied all the mechanical connections, just to be sure. After that I put it back in the rack and reconfigured it again, turned the power off and unfortunately the problem was still there. I have no idea what else I could do myself about it, so I guess I'll have to ship it to them for maintenance. I hope they can fix it. I'll keep you posted.