I recently picked one of these Yamaha AW1600 MTR digital recorders up on eBay. The one I bought has some issues like missing knobs and it looks like it needs a going over and a clean from the finger-grease residue around the volume knob in the top right. And something else that might be an issue with this one is its hard drive–I’d be surprised if the CD drive still works or is all there. Built around 2005, these types of recorders used laptop-style IDE hard disk drives. Anyone who has used a computer from that time may know that these hard drives won’t last forever and can start acting sluggish before they die unexpectedly. Trust me, I’m in the IT field. I did some digging and Yamaha suggests only replacing the hard drive with the same type that the unit shipped with, a 40GB (Gigabyte)/7200RPM IDE drive. That’s a spinning hard drive. Modern computers and devices use solid state drives, that have no moving parts. What, you can’t replace it with some kind of IDE to SATA converter or an SD card converter like old PCs can use? Challenge accepted!
One of my other hobbies other than music is collecting older Apple computers and many times people put SD card adapters in place of a hard drive. I actually did this for my iBook and it runs like a champ, so much faster than the original hard drive! The computer will end up running faster, cooler and quieter without a spinning hard drive whirring around inside. I figured a hard disk recorder could do the same with some kind of solid state storage such as an SD or CF (Compact Flash) memory card inside or even an SSD (solid state drive). Fingers crossed! I’ll update this page with my progress and may even make a YouTube video about it.
Why did I buy this? Why not record onto a laptop using a USB interface? One of the musicians I’ve jammed and recorded with within the last 20 years is my friend “Lefty” Mike. (The “Lefty” monikier distinguishes him from my other guitarist-friend named Mike who is a righty and of course sets him apart from King Mike, but that’s a different story.) He has one of these exact recorders and has recorded HUNDREDS of songs with it. We used to record our practices and he’d burn the drummer and I CDs that we listened to on the way home in our cars. It was great! Plus, three words for you: Neutrik Combo Connector. The other recorders I’ve looked at only have 1/4″ jacks so it’d be a pain to get an XLR cable plugged in.
After a few months of Lefty Mike recording us, I found out I could plug a USB cable into the recorder, the other end into my Mac and transfer over the raw WAV audio files that I could drop into my DAW of choice, then mix down myself. I’ve been recording practices with my jazz band lately with my little Tascam pocket recorder but it’s a room recording and sometimes it needs some active mixing during songs. With the AW1600, I could have each person on their own channel. Plus you can add compression or reverb to the drums, crowd noise, thunder, wind, screeching car tires, plywood breaking, etc., etc., when you mix songs yourself. Yes, the AW1600 should fit the bill nicely!
Links:
AW1600
- Reset recorder settings
- Hard Drive Maintenance
- AW1600 OS Updater V1.13 – Burn this file to a CD and insert it into the recorder
- AW1600 User Manual PDF – English
- AW1600 Service Manual PDF – English & Japanese
- Dijon Stock Docs Page Archive – This was a great resource for all things Yamaha digital recorders. Sadly the website went dark a few years ago. This link is from archive.org’s web archive of the site.
Non AW1600 Files:
AW16G
- AW16G Firmware V1.06
- AW16G Tools Disk excluding the demo song
- AW16G Tools Disk files with demo song
AW2400
AW2400 OS Updater v1.13 – this is the AW2400 updater.
Page Updates:
Some of the missing knobs I replaced. I was able to download and modify a 3D printer file of a generic mixer knob, then went in and cut the 1/2 moon shape out of the left side and got the knob to the correct dimensions. Not an exact fit, but they work. I may redo them in white if I ever buy some white PLA plastic for my 3D printer.
I’ve also been trying to find an AW1600 Tools CD or ISO (CD image file) that I can use with my 1600. So far no luck. When I contacted Yamaha, they sent me a link to a TAR file (see Contents of the CD-ROM image) but I’ve yet to get the deck to recognize it. See the link above in the Links section I’ve tried the following:
- Burn CD on a Mac using the ISO disc format – FAILED AW1600 doesn’t recognize the disc
- Burn CD on a PC using the ISO disc format – FAILED AW1600 doesn’t recognize the disc.
- Connect AW1600 to PC or Mac via USB and put the TAR file on the AW1600’s disc, reboot AW – FAILED, the AW doesn’t do anything.
I have bought and installed a SATA solid state drive and tried 2 different IDE to SATA converters. The AW1600 uses a full size 40GB IDE hard drive which is mounted on a vibration isolated mounting plate inside the unit. Right now, I’ve got the solid state drive connected with the IDE to SATA adapter, but the 1600 keeps asking for the tools CD. I already tried burning the update to a CD and inserting it with no luck.
Simply burning the updater file to a CD doesn’t work, that’s just one BIN file. According to the AW16G updater that I’ve found, it includes 2 BIN files, one labeled PROG and one labeled BOOT. Here are the next 3 things I’m going to try:
- Try harvesting the BIN files from the working hard drive, burning those on a CD and seeing if that works as the CD the system is asking for.
Update: May 5, 2025
I think I figured out what the issue is, why it won’t boot and do other things. When I got the unit, the EQ knob was broken off; the shaft was broken so only the hole where the shaft was is there. You can stick something inside the hole to turn the potentiometer, but it doesn’t work 100% like it should. For instance it doesn’t click like a button (up/out & down/in) like the other pots next to it. So I’m thinking it’s stuck in the in position.
The reason I think this is because if I’m in a menu like the CD menu and I press the arrow down button, it switches to the EQ menu. Also, if I try to check the OS version by holding down certain keys, that doesn’t work–I’m guessing because it’s detecting the EQ button being held down too.
It looks like I can order a replacement. The cheapest I’ve found with shipping is $13 US. I haven’t even looked to see how big of a job this would be. I think there’s multiple boards inside, so I’ll have to disassemble the whole thing just to get to that encoder pot. I’ll have to think about that.
Last update 5-4-25