How to open an Mbox 2: teardown
24 Jul 2010Here are some teardown instructions/destructions for opening up Digidesign’s Mbox 2. This little journey took place after the USB port decided it would be a great time to fail, thus rendering the entire device useless. Got to love it when a $2 part breaks a $500 device, huh?
Presented with a choice of shipping it off for at least 2 weeks and some probably-not-insignificant freight costs (the device in question was under warranty but a parallel import from the US), the best option was, of course, to crack the thing open.
YouTube evidence of the (highly successful) insanity follows:
I’ve been using it reliably for about a week now and can say confidently that no damage was done! In fact, it’s actually sounding better, too.
Not only did the USB port coming loose stop data from flowing, it also caused grounding issues and introduced some hum/other noise when it was incorrectly positioned. The new USB port has not only stopped the device from spontaneously disconnecting, it’s also improved the quality of the audio recorded. Brilliant.