Brian, We have a FACStar Plus with a TSO upgrade and I am very happy with it. Although it took quite a while to learn the TSO. I routinely comfortably sort at three and four times the slow speed rate with very good purity and recovery. As far as your noise is concerned I have two questions and then a couple of comments. Do you have the newer teflon (not stainless) valves in your TSO control box? You may need to check with BD about this. Also do you have your sheath filter before the valves or after the valves? We had some trouble with fluidic stability when we first got ours and someone suggested ( I think it was Joe Trotter) putting the sheath filter after the valves. In addition to these two suggestions I would suggest clean the sheath tank, sheath lines, and change your in-line filter if has been on there a while. Also make sure that your Forward collection lens, Side Scatter Collection lens, and other optics are clean. As far as your side streams are concerned there is an art to getting them right. There are 9 different controls which shape your streams. It takes a keen eye and practice. My side streams don't come out very far from the center either but we get around this by coating the sides of the tubes with 100% Fetal Calf Serum. The cells tend to slide rather than stick to the side of the tube. Use enough volume to make your final dillution about 10%. Good Luck and keep in touch! Gary Ward Englert Cell Analysis Laboratory Norris Cotton Cancer Center Lebanon, NH
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