Richard,
All the more reason to find a good deal on Ebay. I can't see paying more than you need to for a NOS piece when a used one will give you the same exact results.
Another thing I like about Rane, is they will still support all their equipment, even though it's discontintinued. Those people up there are awesome, and they take a lot of pride in everything they make.
A couple of years ago, I was having an issue with a buzzing noise in my preamps in my large rack which wasn't ground loop hum, this was something completely different. I was mixing 3 preamps into a stereo effects rack using my Voodoo Labs Ground Control, and GCX loop switcher to select the preamp or combination of preamps I wanted to run through the processing chain. I was mixing these with one of my SM-26 Splitter/Mixers.
I called Rane because I wanted to know if I got one of the SM-82 Mixers off Ebay, would I get better results mixing these preamps into the signal chain? I talked with a man named Carl there, and explained my rig the way I was hooking it up to him. When I told him about the SM-26 I was using, (the oldest one), he told me something I never knew about. They still had the serial number of that unit registered in my name from 1988 when I bought it new! He then informed me that they had a recall on those units because the front panel screws were sub-standard and needed to be replaced because they didn't properly ground the chassis to the front plate. He offered me a RA# to send the unit in to have it upgraded, but instead, I had him send me the screws and I'd change them myself, which he did. They sent me a complete front assembly set and a bunch of extras.
While we were on the phone, he heard my rig in the background which was on, and asked me about that buzzing, what was it from? I told him it was the rig and I was working on that problem as we were speaking. Carl then asked me to explain my connection path of the preamps to the SM-26, which was three ADA preamps, the inputs to each one was routed through the GCX from three of the GCX loops, being used as amp selectors. He got online while we were on the phone and looked up the GCX loop Switchers, and saw a problem which I never would have found on my own. The way the GCX works in this particular configuration, is that it shorts out the ground in the output of the loop to cut out the send to the input of the preamp. This was what was causing the buzz I was hearing from my rig!
I don't know about you, but I think it's amazing that these guys could help with technical assistance in a complicated rig like that over the phone, that involved equipment from other brand names! Because of this, I split my input lines to go direct to each preamp, and just used a "dead" program in each one that I didn't want to use in the signal path, (program 128). A bit of MIDI mapping, and I was able to get the results I was looking for! Those folks helped a lot more than I could have anticipated, so yeah, I swear by Rane gear!
Harley