Please help me diagnose amp problem.
 

I recently purchased a soundstream tarantula amp off ebay. The big chrome 2000 watt beast with a big tarantula on top. The seller guaranteed that it worked and offered a full refund if not. Well it does not work, and if I send it back I lose shipping both ways, plus the tax I paid when it got here, so now I need to fix it..

Here is what I have figured out so far:

1. when hooked up in the vehicle, as soon as I turned the HU on the amp sucked 4 volts off my battery and in less than 10 seconds the drain shut off everything in the van. it did not blow the 100 amp fuse under the hood.

2. there is continuity (tested with ohm meter) between b+, and b- on the amp. therefore there is a short, but not a dead short because neither the 100 amp underhood fuse or the 300 amp amplifier did not blow..

3. Nothing inside the amp looks burnt

4. between the circuit board and heatsink, there are 32 bipolar transistors, and what looks like 32 fets, all in parallel rows of 8. what I have found using a meter set on diode test, is that one row of fets is shorting to ground.

This is where I am lost, I don't know where to go from here. I don't know if it's as simple as bad fets, or if and how other components should be tested.

I will try to get some pictures.

here is a pic of the top. http://i445.photobucket.com/albums/qq175/vingasoline/amp/DSC02471.jpg

I am assuming the 2 coils at the top are power supply transformers. what are the other 2 in between..

Pic of bottom http://i445.photobucket.com/albums/qq175/vingasoline/amp/DSC02474.jpg

I am pretty sure the big ones are bipolar output transistors. I am not sure what the small ones are, but the whole row is shorting to ground.

amp
 

It sound like you have a blown output components - usually either a fuse would go or protection ckt kicks in to avoid from damaging it anymore further. It's quite difficult troubleshooting it by guessing espsecially if your knowledge in electronics is limited. By looking at the picture, seems to be nothing much major but rather need to test the output components.
The least that we can do is to check it for you at no charge but something need to ship it to us. Call us at 647-435-5980 if interested. Chris.

this amp weighs 40 pounds, so it would be expensive to ship. that being said, I would prefer it to be fixed if I ship it. So I need to know, worse case scenario, how much would this amp cost to fix? and if it's just the 8 fets, how much for that?

Normally I wouldn't care, but I think I already have too much money into this thing as it is..

oh yeah and when I got this thing, all the brass studs holding the circuit board in were busted, the guy tried to epoxy them back on but it didn't hold in shipping. talk about being ripped off on ebay. :stroke:

thanks for your time.

I understand your concern. To briefly give you an idea, those fets are usually worth $5.00 each and we charge $50.00/hr labour including 90 days parts and labour warranty. Those studs are minor parts but plays a very important role in car amplifier. If not properly installed, you have to consider heat and vibrations to that...ANyhow, we would let you know the cost prior to any work perform.

well it's definately blown transistors. I pulled them out and they have the wrong part #s according to the schematic I got from Soundstream.. so now, if anybody can help me find this part ssp80n06a it would be greatly appreciated.

Good ol' Ebay, dumping ground of broken crap. Nice amp, sorry to hear about your issues with it. Chris at S&S will be able to get you back on track. I still have one of these amps in my front counter, never ever been touched with power. I might get around to making a system around it one of these days, doubt it though. For now I have kids coming in all the time and drooling over it.

what's retail on it? Just wondering how much of a good deal I got on this piece o crap. Also, I notice in you sig it says "whatever else you need" well I need a pair of mmats juggernaut 12's. we have no mmats dealers around here.

Retail on this amp when it was new some years ago was at best guess $4599.00. When I make it to the shop tomorrow I will see what I can do to source out MMats for you. Might take a little bit to find them if they are in Canada at all.