Cracklin' & Poppin Powered Mixer

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Mackovyak
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Cracklin' & Poppin Powered Mixer

Post by Mackovyak »

I've been using a Kustom Profile 1 system for about 2 years and loved it. I haven't played in 6 months, but hooked everything up today and I'm just getting cracklin' and poppin'.....any channel, any volume, same thing. A little bit of effect.

Worked fine when I put it away, didn't get any hard drops or anything???

Obviously something's blown or worked loose, I was just looking on some ideas of what it could be before I go get ripped off at a repair center.
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paul
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Post by paul »

Try pulling it apart and spraying your master volume pot or actually all your pots and sliders with tuner cleaner or another type of spray cleaner. You can pick it up at Radio Shack. It could be dirty pots and its easy and cheap to try it out yourself before taking it to some one. When you spay the cleaner spray it directly into the pot and or sliders and work the slider or pot back and forth several times and it will clean them out. Also while you have it apart check the wires going to the output jacks and to your amplifier itself. If that doesn't take care of it it could possibly be the amp itself starting to go bad.
Hope that helps,
Paul
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lonewolf
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Post by lonewolf »

Sounds like leaky filter capacitors. Sometimes can be a bad plate resistor in tube amps, but this is SS, right. Does it sound like bacon frying?
Last edited by lonewolf on Wednesday Jul 20, 2005, edited 1 time in total.
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Mackovyak
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Bacon

Post by Mackovyak »

I worked all the pots, nothing.



Sorta does sound like bacon frying....
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lonewolf
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Post by lonewolf »

It probably needs the power supply filter capapacitors replaced. Its pretty common to have to replace them every so often in power amps. This is one job where the parts can cost more than the labor.
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paul
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Post by paul »

Yeah and I imagine that you won't find anyone down there that will work on it cheaply.
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KMFDM ROB
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Post by KMFDM ROB »

Filter caps are super easy to replace, but aren't cheap as stated above. My Marshall JCM800 2210 took either 3 or 4 of them, at 25$ a piece. The repair was done in under 30 minutes (take apart amp, put back together et cetera).
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Post by KMFDM ROB »

However, anytime I've had to replace filter caps, it was because the amp oscillated, or made it sound like multiple guitars were playing out of tune. I never had cracking and popping because of filter caps.
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Ron
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Post by Ron »

More than likely it's a bad transistor somewhere in one of the amplifier stages.

The best way to find the bad transistor is to get some cool spray. Carefully spray each transistor one at a time and when you hit the bad one, the noise should stop or decrease. That will help about 50% of the time.

If that doesn't help, you're in for some work. Do you have access to an oscilloscope and a signal generator? They can be used to help pinpoint the source of the noise, but it will probably show up everywhere to some extent, and it will be difficult to find.

If you don't get it fixed, eventually the transistor will break down and short. If the amp is direct-coupled, one shorted transistor can take out every other transistor in that output channel.
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Mackovyak
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Bingo

Post by Mackovyak »

Ron, I just missed your post before taking it to commercial audio.

The tech wasn't there when I picked it up, but his notes just said...

"replaced transistor"

Then they nailed me for $85. I don't know the effort put into this, so I'm not sure if I got ripped off or not, but at least it works again. That little Kustom Profile system is quite loud and has some nice sounding effects for the price. Didn't want to lose it.

Thanks for the help guys...

Justin
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Ron
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Post by Ron »

$85 is not bad at all.

A lot of places are charging $75 just to open something up.
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Post by songsmith »

Yeah, I'd say you got away cheap.----->JMS
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