1989, I’ve had the damned amp longer than I’ve had my wife. Turned things on to let them warm up while I walked the dogs. Was going to come in and just listen to something loud. I was Saturday after all. Turned on the pre-amp and when I turn on the amp, two seconds later I get a electronic buzz over the speakers kind of sound you wen when bad noise is leaking from a cable.
Leaned back to look at the wiring in case my wife had knocked something out while cleaning and I get a strong burning smell and I feel the heat rising up to meet my face. Frantically unplugged the main power. The amp got quite hot in a very particular area.
Was told it would be guaranteed whatever it was, I’d had a complete service and upgrade on it back in Nov or so last year. Worked flawlessly until last Saturday. Fingers crossed.
Electrolytic Capacitors have a limited lifetime, it’s usual what goes in older gear, but they tend to have a chemical smell.
It’s usually an easy fix, so hopefully your back up and listening quickly.
A Carver M1.0t I had it upgraded and fully serviced last year. The guy is well known in the old Carver amp world and he said he’d repair for me no questions asked. He did walk me through a little bit of troubleshooting. The area in question is circled in red. Nothing is obviously burned and it was on for no more than 10 seconds before I unplugged it. He worked with me to zero out and reset the appropriate voltage on the little blue pot right next to the circle there. Apparently the pot itself is bad as it would not set to the voltage it needed to. .005 millivolts. It would get there and then immediately drop to zero.
I own many Pelicans of different sizes just for this reason, protected shipping of my beloved gear. I too own older equipment and “feel” your pain, good luck and hopefully turn-around won’t be more than a few weeks.
Actually the Pelican cases are a really good idea for shipping audio gear. Thankfully this is the first ever item that’s “broken” on me. The guy I am dealing with actually offered heavy duty cardboard boxes with customized heavy foam materials that cradle the amp perfectly. He sells that for $25 bucks and I took him up on the offer to buy one when he shipped it back to me.
Shipping it to him was a snap and I felt safe doing so, otherwise it would have taken me a week to find the appropriate boxes and materials.
The amp is fixed. I found the small transistor that is connected to the heatsink had a cracked leg soldered to the board with that small ribbon cable. it was the transistor that binds to the heatsink; I’ve replaced both of the transistors on that board and soldered the ribbon cable directly into the board. She’s good and solid now. I’ll keep it on my rack over the weekend just to make sure.
Speaking of vintage gear…anyone know anything about late 70s Hitachi receivers? Not that it was high end to start with, but I have a SR-300 I picked up from a thrift shop a while back, but it’s got some channel shorting I need to fix to make it usable. Worth the effort?
