M6 Classic meter circuit board

[Anbaric]

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As most of us now know, supplies of the M6 Classic meter circuit board ran out in 2022 (the main M6-TTL board had run out several years earlier). Leica has made noises about fitting the M6 2022 board both to the M6 and the M6-TTL (converting the latter into a vanilla M6), but this service is not yet available. Alan Starkie of Cameraworks-UK has blogged about the issue and suggested he intends to make a replacement board, at least for the Classic. Now it looks like someone may have done just this, with a Reddit post showing a pre-production board ready for testing. 'ACR' is I think Amsterdam Camera Repairs.

Edited September 27, 2024 by Anbaric

[alphonse2501]

A few months ago I did ask DAG about M6 meter circuit board before sent mine, he replied:

 

Quote

early main circuit boards in M6 cameras were not as good as the newer style that the circuit board company made for Leica, the last circuit board I replaced was about 4 years ago, Leica stopped selling circuit boards once they came out with their newest style M6 camera so people would have to buy a new M6 instead of fixing their old M6. The main reason main circuit boards don't seem to be needed lately is if a circuit board is defective it takes about 12 hours of use before they go bad and for an M6 camera meter to be on for a total of 12 hours may take over 10 years so it now seems that perhaps all of the defective boards have been on for at least 12 hours & have had their main boards replaced. So chances are your M6 in question either had its board replaced or its a good board.

 

[Anbaric]

Even so, I don't think we should expect the existing board to last forever. As Alan Starkie puts it in the link above:

'The problem with the ceramic hybrid main boards is that the surface mount components are not soldered but glued using silver loaded epoxy. In addition, on close inspection, there seems to be a screen printed overlay of black ink. This I think may be screen printed resistors. This is problematic because over time, the material can start to drop off. Replacing the 'off delay' components, which can cause problems can be difficult with these hybrid boards. ... The electronics of an M6 are primarily transistors, op-amps, diodes, resistors and capacitors, the latter being the only one to degrade in any great way. Then you have ageing of soldered joints and conductive glued joints, battery corrosion, moisture corrosion and general oxidation.'

So having the option of a replacement board is quite a big deal for the long-term viability of the M6, which might otherwise last as long as an M3 ('The first M6 was 1984 and circuit boards have only just become unavailable. That's nearly 40 years but these cameras have at least another 40 years life in them.'). Leica themselves may eventually sort this out of course, as in the linked thread above, but I would hope that a board like this will be both substantially less expensive than Leica's proposed service, and adjustable by local technicians (recent Leica meters are apparently adjusted by in-house proprietary software rather than just tweaking a potentiometer).

[T I N O]

..there seems to be some progress - just stumbled over Amsterdam Camera Repair's Instagram, where it looks like they completed a first small production run of M6 classic meters, and they are being put in cameras as we speak 👏

https://www.instagram.com/amsterdam_camera_repairs/

 

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