Hey everyone, I’m a new technician workin here in Austin TX on mostly vintage gear. Have done a couple of tube amps and decks, but prefer to focus in solid-state world. Luckily I have a great mentor to guide me along the path. Unfortunately he recently moved out of town but we’re still working well together via email and text to continue my training.
Most recent highlight is recovering the power supply on a Pioneer SX-1980. I pulled my hair out with some confusing behavior, but put in som improvement modifications so I hope it will have another 50 years of life in it.
Most recently (yesterday) I had two units smoke on my bench. One was a unit that had been garaged for a few years. Turned it on the second time and blammo, a power cap shorted. Luckily the fuse did its work. Now will have to see if there is any other collateral damage. Second was trying to set idle current on a NAD 7020. Was following the procedure and one output died a;Ong with smoking a couple of resistors. Now after reading a bit I hear this design is squirrelly by design (no emitter ballast resistors). Will probably add the emitter resistors before I replace the blown outputs.
Mainly I plan on leaning a lot and posting whenever I get a tricky one that stumps me. It’s always good to get experience from folks that have seen a lot of amps, and each model seems to have its own quirks. So far I get a wide assortment of units so it’s always something new on my bench. Perhaps after s couple of decades it will all look familiar by then. But for now all is new.
Im trained in electrical engineering but the audio world is new for me. This has been a fun ride so far and am leaning a lot.
