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Re: [Amps] Alpha 87A Fault 17

To: amps@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [Amps] Alpha 87A Fault 17
From: Jim Brown <jim@audiosystemsgroup.com>
Reply-to: jim@audiosystemsgroup.com
Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2017 10:49:38 -0800
List-post: <amps@contesting.com">mailto:amps@contesting.com>
Hi Charlie,

40 years ago, my job was field service of audio and video systems, many of them large and spread out. Experience taught me that the first thing to look for was a short to ground, which nearly always accompanied cable damage, and which nearly always accompanied work by some building trade in the area of the wiring. At Wrigley Field, I was often able to quickly find damage to loudspeaker wiring by asking where building trades had recently been working. The same techniques applied to low level wiring (like mics and control lines).

There are other reasons for Fault 17, and I've encountered them with a newly acquired 87A that seems to be in excellent shape. One is a memory tuning that doesn't come close to matching the load, and the amp instantly faults to 17. This can be tricky to solve, but I've done it at least once by copying a memory setting from a nearby band segment to the band segment in question.

Another cause seems to have been bad data in RAM -- killing power and restarting eliminated the fault.

Based on my limited experience, I would recommend exhausting these possibilities before opening up the amp. I'm not criticizing your troubleshooting, which is certainly excellent, but rather to caution others not to unnecessarily open a can of worms.

73, Jim K9YC

On Tue,1/10/2017 10:19 AM, Charlie Young wrote:
Besides correcting a few issues following a blower change, the main problems 
preventing the Alpha from working were in the wiring harness.  The first issue 
was an open wire on the Rbias monitor circuit which resulted in a hard fault 1 
when the operate switch was pushed.  This wire runs from the TR output module 
over to the microprocessor board.   Not only was this wire open, one side of 
the wire was at chassis potential.


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