Too easy

There is no better time to work on amplifiers than first thing in the morning. Especially on a rainy day – the sound of the water tank filling up fast is music to my ears.

The OM Power amp is a well fused amplifier. Over fused to be precise: there are at least 25 fuses in the unit and troubleshooting starts with checking them all. Unfortunately, they were all fine. It was time to get down and dirty, to a component level.

Most modern amplifiers are basically modular in construction and the OM Power amp contains a number of boards. In order to save space, some of those boards are mechanically and electrically interconnected in obscure ways. Every cubic centimetre is packed to the brim! The high voltage board is sandwiched nicely, meaning half an hour of disassembly. The good news: the transformer itself was fine. Another good news: a 15W 4.7 Ohm resistor in series of the HV line was dead. At least I would not need to haul the amp back to the mainland.

It was time for a coffee. With a clear head, and focused on getting the amp back on the air, I needed a bit of time to find the answer to a crucial, core question: which household appliance has a 5 Ohm / 15W resistor inside? The microwave oven? Washing machine? Fridge? The question is not which one of those three appliances is least needed, but which one is going to sacrifice its life to save the amplifier? If you are an appliance on a remote island then life is a bitch; only the toughest survive.

By midday, the amp was back on air. I am not going to bore you with the details, but lets just say that choosing between dirty shirts, cold beer and hot coffee is hardly rocket science.

One ticked off the ‘to do list’, twenty more to go…