About the Studio

A small studio building consoles the way they should have been built.

Founded 2020

Studio Florida, United States

Practice Restoration · Customization · Documentation

StudioFR began in a garage with a single broken PlayStation and the conviction that the consoles of the last thirty years deserved better than landfill. What started as a personal restoration habit became a YouTube channel, and what started as a YouTube channel became a small atelier that ships a handful of hand-finished builds every month.

The Origin

A practice, not a repair shop.

The first console I restored was a launch-day PS2 with a dead laser. The proper repair would have taken twenty minutes and a $40 part. Instead I spent the weekend stripping it, polishing the chassis, replacing the optical block with a brand-new module, and giving the controller a fresh set of conductive pads. The console came back to life in better condition than when it left the factory.

That ratio — the difference between a shortcut repair and a full restoration done properly — became the studio's only rule. We don't list a console for sale until every system inside it has been opened, cleaned, tested, and either repaired or replaced. The chassis is refinished. The thermal paste is fresh. The capacitors that fail by design are pre-emptively replaced. The build is documented on video.

The result is a console that costs more than a flea market unit and less than a museum piece. It works. It looks like new. And it has a paper trail.

"When I open a console, I'm not refurbishing it. I'm finishing the job the original factory ran out of time to do."

Studio Note · 2024

The Practice

Five disciplines, every build.

Sourcing

Donor consoles are bought in bulk from estate sales, retro stores, and private collectors. Only chassis without irreparable damage make it into the queue.

Disassembly & Diagnosis

Every screw out, every board photographed. Failure points are identified up front: capacitors, optical blocks, controllers, fans, thermal interfaces.

Restoration

Components are replaced or rebuilt to factory spec. The chassis is polished, repainted, or refinished depending on the build. New thermal paste, new pads, new feet, new gaskets.

Customization

For custom-finish builds: hand-painted shells, accent rings, controller color matching. Each color combination is documented and named.

Documentation & Testing

A 2-hour soak test confirms thermals, optical reads, and controller pairing. The full build is filmed for the YouTube channel — one console, one episode.

[Founder portrait]

The Founder

Rod, builder and channel host.

I'm a long-time tinkerer turned full-time restorer. The studio is my second life — by day I traded options for a living; nights and weekends I rebuilt consoles for friends, then for a small audience, then for a YouTube community that grew faster than I expected.

StudioFR is the natural conclusion of that obsession: a place where the work is documented, the process is transparent, and the consoles you receive are the ones I'd be proud to keep.

— Rod

2020

Studio
founded

100+

Consoles
restored

55K

YouTube
subscribers

12h

Average build
time

Selected Work