It is becoming more and more of a challenge to fix modern gear as design and manufacturing advances and the world’s throw-away culture means more and more of our studio and musical equipment are now either uneconomical or virtually impossible to repair. Studio equipment, which as a part of the consumer electronics industries, according to the United Nations, is one of the biggest contributors to global e-Waste. In this article, we investigate what can be done…
DIY Repair
I was on a Sound Engineering/DJ gig a week or two ago and one of my DJ controllers developed a fault. It turned out not be a pitch-it-into-the-nearest-skip kind of fault but it an intermittent fault that meant that the main Play button would not always start the track. The first thing I did was to see how much a replacement controller would cost, either new or secondhand. However, I decided (remember it is close to Christmas) instead of resigning this unreliable yet valuable piece of kit to my loft and buying a replacement that I would investigate what was wrong with it and see if it was something I could fix.
At this time I have to point out that I do not have a degree in electronics, but I am fairly handy with a soldering iron and do know what to look for as it’s normally quite easy to spot a blown component or damaged PCB.
48 screws later and a bit of prising to get the case apart I was in and had found the cause of the problem. It looked like at some point the controller (in its case) had been dropped and the micro-switch under the play button had been damaged. Thanks to the wonder of the internet I was able to identify the component and order a replacement. The DJ controller is now back in 100% working order and it cost me a grand total of 99p + £3.45 for next day delivery and an ear-bending from my wife for taking over the kitchen table for 48 hours!
The Studio Landfill
This episode got me wondering how much other potentially valuable gear, be it studio kit or more standard consumer electronics we had in what we refer to in our house as ‘Deep Storage’ otherwise known as the attic. So one evening last week I went up into our loft hunting for buried treasure and after just 15 minutes found the following:
Apple MacMini G4 (Circa 2005)
3x TFT Flat Screens
Dell PC LapTop (2010)
Apple iPad 1 (2010)
Apple Mac G3 Desktop Computer
Apple MacBook Core 2 (Circa 2006)
HP Pavilion Tower Computer (Circa 2004)
Apple MacBook Pro 2012
I then totted up what all of these would have cost to buy new when they were current products and it came to around £15,000 worth of gear, that is now doing no more than gathering dust in ‘deep-storage’. I then had a ‘eureka’ moment in that I realised that we effectively have our very own studio landfill with 10 pieces of e-waste degrading in our attic.
What Happens To Our e-Waste
The very last thing you should ever do with any of your e-waste items put them in your bin/trash. This will almost guarantee that the items will end up in a landfill site where it will be left to rot for hundreds if not thousands of years leaking nasty toxins into the environment.
The sad fact is that according to a new United Nations report A New Circular Vision For Electronics, at the moment only 20% of the world’s e-waste is recycled. The upside is however that the materials in this waste are worth, according to the report, around $62.5 billion US dollars if recycled properly. To put this figure into some kind of perspective, it is more than the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of many of the countries of the world.
But the problems don’t stop with the 20% of e-waste that is recycled. Sadly, vast amounts of e-waste are shipped illegally to countries in the developing world, where it is stripped and recycled with little regard for the safety of the workers or environment. For example, huge mountains of cables are set alight to melt off the outer plastic to get the valuable copper, releasing vast amounts of toxic gases adding to the environmental effects of this problem.
Planetary Resources
Many of the consumer and studio gadgets are filled with some of the rarest metals and other elements found on earth. These elements are often found and mined in the poorest and conflict-ridden parts of the world, making them not only hazardous to extract but also somewhat unethical to use. Using recycled material is not only far more sustainable to the planet it is also far cheaper as recycling these rare materials is less expensive than processing them from scratch.
Recycle And Feel Better About Your Old Tech
There is a line that goes “Where there’s muck there’s brass”, where ‘brass’ in this context is a northern English term for money. After all, did you ever see a poor scrap metal dealer? Your used tech has a value and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
The mobile phone industry has been a leader phone recycling. Companies like Mazuma Mobile and Envirofone in the UK to name but two can offer a decent cash sum for sending in your phones for recycling or upcycling depending on its condition or model. These companies also take in iPads and other tablet-style devices.
If you have older computers or other tech that you may have outgrown but still functions, think about donating it to charity, rather than leaving it in deep-storage. There are plenty of environmental charities out there who will gladly take in your old tech. We do recommend that you make sure that wiped any hard-drives of your personal data before you do this. Most charities will wipe/reformat any computers but it’s always better to be safe than sorry.
Fix It - Use It - Sell It
Believe it, or not, many common faults on both Macs and PCs can be fixed and even if you are not within easy reach of an Apple store or Apple Premium Reseller there is (at least in the UK) a strong network of reputable computer stores who can often fix the issues you are having, be they hardware or software. Yes, these companies have to charge for what they do, it’s called making a living, but it’s normally far less than the cost of a new machine.
It’s not just a computer that can be fixed. There are plenty of guitar amp and audio electronics specialists out there who, for a fee, will get your broken gear back to fully fit A1 status. Many people assume that when modern gear like synths or effects units die that’s it, game over, but it isn’t always the case. Bigger manufacturers like Yamaha, Roland and Korg do have service centres but for older gear, which is often easier to repair anyway, smaller authorised service centres do exist and they do great work with genuine manufacturers parts.
Even if you see an equipment failure as an opportunity to fork out for the next latest and greatest thing maybe consider getting the old thing repaired first and selling it to help fund the buying of its replacement, rather than relegating the redundant item to deep-storage. Remember that sites like eBay have a quality level called for “spares or repair”. It doesn’t have to work for someone to want to buy it, to go on and either repair or recycle the parts for repairing something else.
Vintage Adds Value
I was talking with a fellow music industry professional about guitars just the other day and I was saying that I’m not really into what some might call “vintage” instruments. He had a quick look at my modest guitar collection and informed me that technically speaking I own at least 6 what are now called vintage guitars. I didn’t think of my 1989 Fender Strat Plus as a vintage guitar but it is now 30 years old making it officially a vintage guitar.
In the studio world, we tend to think of vintage microphones as those from the 1950s and 60s, however, these are no longer vintage they are, from an insurance point of view at least, antique.
You would not just throw away a slightly tatty looking antique Neumann microphone because it stopped working, would you? You would have it lovingly restored and put back into use.
Maybe we need to start looking after, appreciating the value in all our gear, not just the stuff we currently see as valuable because the financial value is one thing, but the environmental cost could be quite another.
What About You?
What do you do with redundant or broken gear? Do you have your own deep-storage? How do you recycle tech? Do you have recycling centres you got to? Do share your thoughts and experiences in the comment below.