what about a short in the deck, causing it to send power THROUGH the rca's.....explaining the smoking, and why the fuses didnt protect it.........believe it or not this DID happen to one of my bro's!!!!

 

I've got my little old kenwood back in service till I can get this figured out. Running perfectly as it has for the last 6 months. Thanks though.

 

Interesting. We had something similar in that the speakers backfed and blew the amp, preamp and source, however that was a 120v setup..

 

So yeah... cracked the case open yesterday to take a look. Not much to say. No caps or transistors evidently scorched. I found one spot that seems to be missing a chip and one chip that seems to have a little heat damage. Didn't really realize there were so many pieces on the circuit board. I'm pretty handy with a soldering iron and multimeter, but I'm just going to take this thing in to get fixed professionally. Shouldn't be too big of a bill to pay.

 

Hard to tell what a repair bills gonna be like. Is it possible the RCAs smoking was just where the smoke was exiting the amp? Or did it look like the RCAs themselves were smoking? I'd concentrate my inspection on the area around the RCAs if the smoke was just exiting the amp there. Do you know what a cold solder or broken solder joint look like. They usually don't cause smoke but could send amp into protection.

 

I don't have all the gear I used to, but I did some R/C manufacturing several years ago. I see two suspect places with the naked eye but I'd really need a scope and more importantly scematics to repair it properly. I just don't have the time and patience for it right now. The shop with the best reputation around town is Hitek and they said amp repairs are usually in the $60-80 range and they would contact Zapco directly about it. For what I've got into this amp, I think that's very reasonable.

 

I didn't realize you already had an estimate or talked to someone about it. I didn't know your background insmall electronics either. I'm glad you found a local shop that sounds competitively priced for repairs. Good luck

 

Thanks

 

Update: The fets were blown. Don't know for sure if I did it or the previous owner. Oh well. These guys sure do take their time getting parts in :s

 

What are you using for a converter off the Bose deck? Bose usually uses balanced outputs so you can't just go connecting to standard high level inputs.