I want to cry, it’s not even yet 10am on 3/25/20 and i somehow managed to blow, 1 headphone tube amplifier and 1 set of planars both under 2 completely unrelated circumstances . Then to add insult to injury after walking away to compose myself and keep this curse which has hit me today from doing further damage, as I’m making myself a cup of coffee, the machine decides it’s not going to stop at 12 oz and now ther’es hot coffee everywhere too
A pox has befallen me, please pray for my safety and survival. Total MSRP damages at this point, $2.5k…
A broken tube amp? Now thats what I call a loss for the humanity. And i am not joking.
I once got pair of used, big B&W speakers delivered. dont remember the exact model, something with “5”. They were not that expensive, about 250ish about 5 years ago. While trying to get the big boxes up the stairs one fell down. When I hooked them up I saw that one of the drivers had gotten damaged and was crackling, buzzing. Replacing it would have cost another 200 so I let it go
I have been confined to the house as many others and have limited ability to Telework so I decided to be pro-active and productive. I took apart my entire office system, diagrammed it and re-wired everything with care taken to wire management. I got done late last night and decided to fire it up for a test run first thing this AM.
I tested the 2.1 set up first: Innuos server -> Exogal DAC-> Decware CPS2/Pre-amp-> Sugden FP-4 Amp-> speakers.
After an hour of trouble shooting I realized the Decware was the issue. No output at any gain level other than maximum and no control via the volume knob. My heart sank, I really LOVE that Amp, oh well I’m sure it can be fixed.
Now that I knew I had a pre-amp issue, I wanted to make sure I could still use my Adcom amp to power my HiFiman HE6se’s somehow, so I re-wired around the Decware and just to test it used a small RCA to RCA adaptor to bring the ADCOM in line with another pre-amp to test.
Well, FML, i turn it on and get a dead channel on the right side, wtf, as I am reaching over to power down the amp I get a terrible buzz through both earpieces which almost blew out my eardrums. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I tested the headphones on a different amp, tested the wires. Dead headphones, both sides.
I’ve been so sick to my stomach over both incidents I refuse to power anything up today, there’s some kind of curse over me, i’m worried I’ll blow something else up too.
That’s as condensed and short as i can make it. Thank’s for letting me vent guys.
Yes, it’s not a fuse, it’s something weird. I also replaced all the tubes. It only works on max gain and then there is no volume control. I only tested this theory on headphone out, not in pre-amp mode. in that mode there is minimum output, you can hear something with gain at maximum thru the speakers, i almost believe is cross feed coming thru the DAC
I wish that were the case. I just recently got the server, and spent last week figuring it out. I ran it through the decware and exogal and Sugden and the 3 pieces had beautiful synergy. So much so that i decided this was endgame quality which led me to re-wiring everything this week. I finally found my Nirvana and then promptly blew it all up
I can’t believe my luck…waiting on a call back from Decware, I’m sure we can figure out what happened. Literally all i did was unplug the unit and simply re-run the wires in a cleaner more organized configuration. It is an old amp though, circa 2006, things were bound to foul up and go bad…
I know from experience the driver wires probably burnt up, so if you fancy a quarantine DIY project you should be able to revive them with some soldering.
. Then to add insult to injury after walking away to compose myself and keep this curse which has hit me today from doing further damage, as I’m making myself a cup of coffee, the machine decides it’s not going to stop at 12 oz and now ther’es hot coffee everywhere too 
