Hi everyone
Today I had a very unusual problem. Hugh helped me resolve the issue and suggested that others might be interested in reading the account.
Last night, after becoming utterly disgusted with the cricket, I decided to do a bit of listening before going to bed. I loaded up my favorite CD and eased back to listen but something was wrong. On inspection there was very little volume coming from the left channel and what there was, was very distorted. All the connections were ok and swapping the input channels produced the same result on the left side. “Great!!! #@#% amp problem” I thought, and went off to bed.
This morning I opened up my AKSA 55. Everything looked good, no loose connections or charred components. I powered it up and all the important voltages were on the money. “This should be working” I said, as my wife put breakfast in front of me.
Back into the lounge room and connecting the right speaker to the left output revealed that the problem was actually the left speaker (Aksonic) and not the amp. (I wish I would have tested this first). A careful listen reveled that the woofer was not working at all and the sound that was coming from the tweeter was distorted.
Having absolutely no idea of where to start I gave Hugh a call and as always he was happy to help. Having relayed the problem Hugh gave me a great explanation of what could have happened (which I wont even try to relay) and gave me some steps to go through to see where the problem lay. Fist was to measure the resistance of the woofer. It was supposed to be about 6.8 ohm but when I measured across the speaker terminals I got infinite resistance. Ok, problem found, the driver is stuffed !!. After pulling the driver out I noticed that one of the little wires that goes from the speaker terminal to driver cone/coil was broken. On closer inspection the two broken ends looked frayed almost “chewed’. It then dawned on me what could have happened.
I live out in the country a bit and the occasional mouse in the house is just a fact of life. We have also done some renovating lately and a few wall plates are still off the wall giving the little rascals easy access it seems. The reason I came to my conclusion so quickly is that only a week ago one of the little rodents had got into a computer that is in the same room. It left enough droppings and pee on obviously sensitive parts of the motherboard that it stopped working.( replaced motherboard). I caught the culprit though, but he obviously has friends.
Back on the phone to Hugh, I told him that the wire was broken. He told me that I must have had an extreme amount of current go through the driver to melt that wire and the coil would also be damaged. Almost feeling a bit foolish, I said that the wire looks like it might have been chewed, - by a mouse. After a short period of silence, Hugh suggested that if this was the case that I could solder the wire together and all should be well. After a very fiddly solder job I measured the resistance across the terminals and it was normal. After also doing a cautionary check of the polyswitches that Hugh suggested , I put it all back together an am now listening to the sweet AKSA sound again.
Why a mouse would take the effort to climb up through the speaker and chew on that particular bit off wire is beyond me. Rest assured I am going mouse hunting again tonight. I also told Hugh that I might put an order in for an Aksacat but he said his particular model might be a bit slow to catch the acrobatic rodents that seem frequent my place.
Thanks again Hugh for your help. I hope this has not been too long and that others may find it interesting.
Thanks
Brownee
