Phil Allison wrote:
Cydrome Leader wrote:

Phil Allison

http://cdn.avsforum.com/3/38/3836566...ach143596.jpeg

That thing looks awful.

** Its actually rather well made - Crown Audio are not mugs.

nasty silicone-looking glue

** Huh ?

I see a red wire glopped to the board at the ends and sort of cable tied
to another brown wire. It makes no sense. Replacing one filter cap will
surely tear the PVC sleeve off all the caps touching it. I really hate
that glue stuff.

and sloppy cable ties parts buried under other parts

** Not true.

How do you replace the lower right TO-3 transistor in the photo? From what
I can tell, you need to remove two more transistors and the headsink that
blocks the one buried under it. It's got that build once, service never
look and feel.

The output and power wiring look nice though.

It is amazing fans cost less than real heatsinks these days.

** It has always been so.

If a fan dies in that thing does it go into some sort of protection mode
or does it just blow up?

The Chinese are getting desperate.

such a crappy transformer is slightly brilliant though. Somebody took the time to try that hack.

** Yeah - I came to the same conclusion.

The Chinese guy who discovered you *could* wind perfectly usable and sellable cores using scraps welded end to end must have got a few big pats on the back - or an extra bowl of rice & fish.

BTW:

The same amp has a novel feature not seen by me before. In faulty condition, it drew about 10mA of AC current while having no DC rails and there was a faint smell of something hot.

Turns out, it has a soft start circuit consisting of a relay and a PTC in parallel. No, not an NTC - a *PTC* !!

A coin sized device made by "Epcos" that has 6 ohms cold resistance and jumps to circa 20kohms if overheated - and it can tolerate 240VAC.

So, if the DC supply does not come up in the first 100mS, the PTC goes high and that is that. Brilliant.

Interesting. Sounds like a built in version of running TV in series with a
light bulb to check for other faults after replacing the horizontal output
transistor.