I think I mentioned it previously, but an old friend of mine has moved back to the UK (from Croatia), who was previously the bass player in the band I used to do the PA for, and (like the Blues Brothers 
) he's reforming the band for a reunion gig - this coming Saturday, 31st Aug.
So we've been collecting and building gear, at the lowest cost possible
One thing he bought was a Trace Elliot bass amplifier, AH200 (presumably off Ebay?), and he's built a 4x10 cabinet, and a 2x15 cabinet, both 8 ohms. However, I then had to repair it, as it was intermittently crackling and buzzing.
Yesterday I went to see him, and he's now bought a Trace Elliot EPAS 400 (again presumably off Ebay) - rather a strange device, but googling it shows it as an amplifier for electronic drums, 200W per channel stereo. Again this has the same intermittent crackling and buzzing problem.
So here are a couple of pictures of the EPAS, it weighs a ton, and has a rather huge conventional transformer, with nice large reservoir capacitors. It had exactly the same fault as the other amplifier, on the first picture there's a six pin plug connecting to the preamplifier, notice there are two screened leads (left and right) with the screens joined together and connected to a single pin. These pins aren't intended for screen connections, and thus the ground pin wasn't making a good connection. The earlier mono amp had a SIL style socket, and had the exact same issue.
In both cases, a little squirt of WD40 on the connections, followed by reinserting the plug, and then carefully pushing the screen pin fully home using a jewellers screwdriver completely cured the problem.
Looking at the pictures below, it's a fairly nicely built unit, and looks like a really well made home made unit
Notice the florescent starter and choke, rather bizarrely there a front display (using the 6 pin connector at the top) which has two 7 segment displays showing the model number, plus a UV tube lighting up the front controls - this is switchable from the rear.
Notice on the bottom picture, there's a thermal protection switch on the heatsink, and that there's only two transistors per channel (it's rated at 200W in to 8 ohms), where the earlier amplifier was rated at 200W in to 4 ohms, and had four transistors. The earlier one used the usual 2SK/2SJ FET pairs, so I presume this has the same - but you can't read the numbers with them down in the heatsink.
Nice little amp, but if you come across a cracking and buzzing problem, it might be worth checking any plug and sockets connecting preamp to power amp.
Got to put it back in it's case now, due to it's weight I struggled getting it out - so sliding it back in might be fun
) he's reforming the band for a reunion gig - this coming Saturday, 31st Aug.So we've been collecting and building gear, at the lowest cost possible
One thing he bought was a Trace Elliot bass amplifier, AH200 (presumably off Ebay?), and he's built a 4x10 cabinet, and a 2x15 cabinet, both 8 ohms. However, I then had to repair it, as it was intermittently crackling and buzzing.
Yesterday I went to see him, and he's now bought a Trace Elliot EPAS 400 (again presumably off Ebay) - rather a strange device, but googling it shows it as an amplifier for electronic drums, 200W per channel stereo. Again this has the same intermittent crackling and buzzing problem.
So here are a couple of pictures of the EPAS, it weighs a ton, and has a rather huge conventional transformer, with nice large reservoir capacitors. It had exactly the same fault as the other amplifier, on the first picture there's a six pin plug connecting to the preamplifier, notice there are two screened leads (left and right) with the screens joined together and connected to a single pin. These pins aren't intended for screen connections, and thus the ground pin wasn't making a good connection. The earlier mono amp had a SIL style socket, and had the exact same issue.
In both cases, a little squirt of WD40 on the connections, followed by reinserting the plug, and then carefully pushing the screen pin fully home using a jewellers screwdriver completely cured the problem.
Looking at the pictures below, it's a fairly nicely built unit, and looks like a really well made home made unit
Notice the florescent starter and choke, rather bizarrely there a front display (using the 6 pin connector at the top) which has two 7 segment displays showing the model number, plus a UV tube lighting up the front controls - this is switchable from the rear.
Notice on the bottom picture, there's a thermal protection switch on the heatsink, and that there's only two transistors per channel (it's rated at 200W in to 8 ohms), where the earlier amplifier was rated at 200W in to 4 ohms, and had four transistors. The earlier one used the usual 2SK/2SJ FET pairs, so I presume this has the same - but you can't read the numbers with them down in the heatsink.
Nice little amp, but if you come across a cracking and buzzing problem, it might be worth checking any plug and sockets connecting preamp to power amp.
Got to put it back in it's case now, due to it's weight I struggled getting it out - so sliding it back in might be fun
