Post by robbieb on Apr 3, 2004 21:01:15 GMT 9
A mate's brother bought a Digitech RP100A guitar processor second hand for some price I don't know about. Anyway, you'd turn it on and be mucking around on it for a bit, when it'd go all skitso and start hissing (on the amp) like when you don't have reception on your tv or radio. You'd turn it off for a bit and then back on and it'd be fine for a minute or two and do the same thing.
Since there was no warranty on it, he was told by a guy in some guitar shop that to look at it it would cost $30, and to fix it could have cost $50 to the price of the unit.
From playing around with it myself, it seemed obvious that some component was overheating or something. I had a look inside, and I could see three power transistors or something in TL-02 packages sticking out the side of the PCB. I plugged it in (Don't worry folks, 9 volts DC won't even electrocute a fly) and played with it for a while until the problem occurred. I touched the transistors and sure enough one of them was definitey way hotter than it should have been. Also when I touched it, the problem stopped and normal function was regained as I had cooled it off slightly.
Problem Solvered, I thought, so I fashioneed up a heat-sink out of a sheet of aluminium and installed it and the thing works like a charm now.
I don't know know if anyone else has encountered such a problem before, but obviously you'd think if the component was supposed to get that hot, Digitech would have put a heat-sink in the first place....
Since there was no warranty on it, he was told by a guy in some guitar shop that to look at it it would cost $30, and to fix it could have cost $50 to the price of the unit.
From playing around with it myself, it seemed obvious that some component was overheating or something. I had a look inside, and I could see three power transistors or something in TL-02 packages sticking out the side of the PCB. I plugged it in (Don't worry folks, 9 volts DC won't even electrocute a fly) and played with it for a while until the problem occurred. I touched the transistors and sure enough one of them was definitey way hotter than it should have been. Also when I touched it, the problem stopped and normal function was regained as I had cooled it off slightly.
Problem Solvered, I thought, so I fashioneed up a heat-sink out of a sheet of aluminium and installed it and the thing works like a charm now.
I don't know know if anyone else has encountered such a problem before, but obviously you'd think if the component was supposed to get that hot, Digitech would have put a heat-sink in the first place....