daisy_knotwise was putting Katie to bed, I went down to the studio to remove the old XT-20s that I'll be using for field recording so that I could replace them with the brand-new used M-20s that arrived today via UPS. Of course, the M-20s are four rack spaces high, while the XT-20s are three rack spaces high, so this meant I was going to have to rearrange things in the rack, because otherwise there wasn't going to be space.I pulled out the three-rack space cassette deck and moved it to the other rack. I can't see the back of the other rack to wire very well, but Gretchen bought me a mirror on a stick last year for Christmas and it made it possible to see which sockets were left and which sockets were the right channel once I had it over there. This is actually an improvement, as I don't use the cassette deck often -- usually once a year or so when transferring cassette recordings for the Pegasus website -- and the patchbay it connects to is in the rack I moved it into, so the cables have a shorter run.
The bottom section of the rack has eight rack spaces. This held two XT-20s, the Apache ADAT patchbay, and the Midisport. The two single space units got evicted to the top of the rack, joining the DAT deck, the Datasync, and the second MIDI patchbay that I use to switch between Cubase and ADATs, since it's just a simple switch that will pass MTC.
I finished removing the XT-20s and went to unpack the M-20s. I opened the first box. There was the M-20, there was the CADI remote, good. Where are the rack ears? How am I going to put this in the rack without the rack ears? Ack!
Ok, open the second box. Still no rack ears. This is going to be bad. I come back to open the third box and toss the second box aside, when I realize that it's heavier than an empty box should be. In the bottom is an M-20 accessory box. In it, carefully taped together, are three sets of rack ears along with three power cords. Yay!
I put the rack ears on the first M-20 and decide to slide it into the rack. Unfortunately, the M-20 is deeper than the XT-20. This normally wouldn't be a problem, except that this rack has a wooden board at the back that rotates around on a set of pins. It has no conceivable reason to exist (it's not structural), but it's there and has been since I assembled the rack.
It blocks access to the analog inputs (which I don't need) and to the power cord socket (which I do). I wiggle the board around, but it's not coming out.
So tomorrow, I will go down to the studio, take the M-20 back out of the rack, grab the jigsaw, and cut the offending board in half so I can remove it.
And then I'll go back to rewiring the studio.
