First Week of October 2013, Busy, Busy, Busy!

          Its been awhile since the last update and for good reason. We've been on our toes actually trying to keep up with work and also sorting out the workspace. Also a couple of good personal things came up and had to be taken care of :)

          So here's a very quick update of a small part of what we've been up to: 

Carver AV-405

Carver AV-405 sitting on top of a Kenwood Karaoke amp

          In the picture above there's a Carver AV-405 amplifier sitting on top of a Kenwood Karaoke amplifier. We haven't sorted the Kenwood out yet but the Carver is in the testing stages. Initial complaint from the customer was that it had no sound out of one of the front channels (its a 5-channel amp). When we tested it, we couldn't get the fault to replicate itself. We took it back to the customer's house and set it up the same way he does. Within minutes the sound from one of the front channels began to fade away. 

          We stripped the Carver down, each channel's amplifier is built into a module so dis-assembly was rather easy. Some capacitors were off specifications so we did a small recap. The Carver runs very hot according to the owner so we checked the solder joints and corrected a few dry ones. We also checked the bias on each channel and four of the five channels were very high so we brought them down. Now the Carver runs warm instead of hot. As for the fading sound problem, well, its been running for awhile now without any symptoms. 

Leak Delta 30

Leak Delta 30 DIN speaker connectors

          Next item in for repair was a Leak Delta 30. The owner had lost the original speaker connectors so he had sent it to another shop to get it fixed. The other shop fitted some speaker cables directly to the internals of the Delta 30.

          As you can see from the picture above, there were these big white color speaker cables coming out from the Leak. When we opened the Leak we saw that these were joined to some normal el-cheapo "hi-fi quality" speaker cables on the inside with a heatshrink and some electrical tape. This pink speaker cable was in turn connected to the leak via some screw connectors. Why do people do stupid things like this? We'll never know...

          Anyway to cut a long story short, we had to replace the female 2-pin DIN connectors as one of the pins had broken off and we got a set of male 2-pin DIN connectors for the owner to connect up some speaker cables to use properly with the Leak. Problem solved. 

Yamaha AX-550

          So for some time now we've been trying to get our workspace sorted. We want to separate the cable production from the repair work but with orders and equipment coming in, we couldn't find the time to get our own stuff sorted. 

           Last weekend we put our foot down and got organized. The rack in the picture above (I don't know why the picture is on its side) was bought to get our parts sorted as well as make some space for the equipment to sit instead of it all sitting everywhere. 

          We also bought some test equipment and we're waiting for it to arrive so in the meantime, we're gonna get some equipment here sorted. One of the issues...well, not really an issue but more like a time-waster is that everytime we get a power amplifier in, we need to hook up a pre-amp to test it. Same way when we get a pre-amp, we need to hook up a power amplifier to test it. Enter the Yamaha AX-550.

          We got this Yamaha from one of our regular customers. He didn't want it anymore and insisted we take it for free...couldn't even offer the guy a free cable when he ordered some cables from us. Anyway, the Yamaha had seen a fair share of abuse. Its missing the record selector knob, its feet, a set of its speaker binding posts had been ripped out and it seems to have been opened up and put back together pretty poorly. 

          The Yamaha has a set of pre-outs and main-in connectors on the back which need to be linked with a pair of jumpers for the Yamaha to operate normally. The plan is to first restore the Yamaha which we'll document here as we go along. It definitely needs to be cleaned! 

          We intend to use the pre-outs and main-in connections in conjunction with a patch panel of some sort so we can easily patch in equipment requiring repair easily and also to test out equipment which have been repaired. Hopefully all goes according to plan... Here are a few more pictures of the Yamaha. :)

Till the next update! 

Repairs: Part 2 - Trade Repairs

          I wanted to talk a bit about trade repairs in this post and how things work around here (Malaysia) and possibly the rest of the world. We do repairs for the trade (re-sellers) and the process is quite simple; they give us a piece of equipment to repair and a budget to work with. Usually these items (equipment) come from one of a few sources:

Second-hand hi-fi galore

• A customer sent it in to be repaired (these are the best as we aren't usually restricted with a budget and can do the best job possible)
• A customer sent it in to be sold but the item is faulty and needs to be repaired cheaply so the customer and the re-seller make a healthy profit each.
• They bought it cheap but there was a fault with it and they need it fixed for cheap before selling it on (these need to be done on a very small budget)
• It was part of the re-seller's inventory and it developed a fault over time. (it has a set budget so they can make a decent profit selling it once its repaired)

Example

Pioneer SA-500 trade repair

          The amplifier above (a Pioneer SA-500) needed a full re-cap. We normally recommend a re-cap for amplifiers above 10-15 years of age. This Pioneer was over 30 years old and still had all of its original capacitors. The owner intended to sell it so they approached a re-seller in the hopes of getting a fast sale. Unfortunately the Pioneer had not been used in years and did not produce any sound when tested.

          This was where we came in. We checked the amplifier over, recommended a re-cap and a price was agreed upon. Initially we were told to only get the amplifier working and not bother with its phono stage as that would go slightly over budget. In the end we decided that the phono stage should be done as well as its a classic amp and chances are it will be used with a turntable. 

Re-Capped and ready to go

          I'm going to go slightly off topic for a moment to sing the praises of this little Pioneer. It pushes out 12W per channel but with a pair of efficient speakers, this small amp has a very big soundstage! Also this was right off the bat so the capacitors were brand new and had not yet settled in. Expecting it to get a lot better as its used. I was actually a bit disappointed to see it go once we had fixed it to be honest. 

          Well, the above amp is a classic example of a trade repair. The customer ended up getting to sell off a working amp instead of a dead one which meant a bigger sale amount. The re-seller stands a chance to make a bigger profit as well. And as for us...well, we're still waiting for the little amp to be sold as we still haven't gotten paid! Lol...till the next one!