MV-8000/8800 MV8-OP1 and MV8-VGA Newly Produced (Warning)

Seller out of Taiwan for the past while has been remaking the MVA-OP1 and the MV8-VGA expansion:

https://www.ebay.com/usr/hellogadgets

Now while this is great for some, this post also acts as a warning due to the quality in which these remakes are being produced. I've linked pictures below of the actual expansions that are being sold / have sold. Very poor quality soldering and low quality components (from first sight, using generic Chinese Chongx capacitors are not what you'd want on your signal path. Unless you like the fact that these capacitors are commonly known to not perform to spec and will very likely raise your noise floor, not fun. I'm very sure any of us would be willing to pay $20 more for higher spec components.

This workmanship is not something one should consider to be reliable. So if you do decide to purchase, do yourself a favor and have someone clean up the solder quality, swap out the capacitors and any other poorly identifiable components for a higher quality equivalent.

For hellogadgets to charge a premium for these upgrades, then at the very least produce better quality kits.

Check the second post, I'll be linking close up pics of these upgrades as well. Simply right click on the images and open in a new browser tab to see the true size.

at least it is being cloned... wish they would have done a better job. I mean i am glad someone made the attempt ..

mr_debauch wrote:at least it is being cloned... wish they would have done a better job. I mean i am glad someone made the attempt ..

I totally agree but the level of soldering required to clone these is quite low. Even if he used the paste method with hot air, it would come out infinitely better than what was shown.

Are you going to redo the solder points?

CharlesRandolph wrote:Are you going to redo the solder points?

Why would I redo them? I'm not the person selling those expansions.

richie wrote:Why would I redo them? I'm not the person selling those expansions.

I thought the expansion was something you've purchased. Any idea how they sound?

i wonder if those 3 chips are DACs and if they are on par with the ones used on the stereo outputs.... also, isn't there a digital input also on the original expansion card?

That’s good to hear they made these for the MV8000/8800 but yeah those globbed solder connections look horrible. Jeez...
Btw... the MV is way underrated.

Ooof... a lot of those solder joints are going to fail

So I bought this from the guy. Invested in a 8 input mixer and cords and all that. SHORTLY after using it my mv8800 started glitching out. I'm 99% it's because of this hardware. It sucks because it's such a great idea but now my MV8800 might be destroyed after 10 years of reliable use. Reading others comments about it now makes me wish I had seen this earlier.

Have you tried removing the expansion(s) to see if you are restored back to normal functionality?

^yeah... also this expansion was completely new news to me until i saw i posted in this thread already.

that sucks you're having trouble.
I guess you could try reflowing/fixing solder joints, if they are looking less than optimal as in the pictures from the original poster here.

there was a person on MV nation making output expanders. if anyone has contact for them, maybe post it here in case they are still making them.

incidentally, multiple output expander devices on samplers often seem to be troublesome -- the Ensoniq EPS and ASR output expander options seems to often create troubles for those machines.