Some customers...

[pfjw@aol.com]

On Saturday, March 26, 2016 at 2:26:52 PM UTC-4, jurb...@gmail.com wrote:

"f you have an questions, please consult a real attorney. "

HA. Half of them are incompetent and the other half, well...

Shakespeare had it dead-right in his play Henry VI. Killing the lawyers was the sure route to tyranny, not the means to restore sanity to society.

Keep in mind that it is "society" that gives or has given us every evil from the Crusades to Jihad and ISIS, from Empress Wu to Donald Trump. Society is essentially insane, and functions only through pitiless and unrelenting control. Where such control has been destroyed, all remnants of societal function have failed. Modern examples include former strong-man states (Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq) where leadership was removed, not deposed. States where leadership was deposed (Iran, Soviet Russia, Balkans amongst others) function today after a fashion, and after an often horrendous shaking out - but they function none-the-less.

Circling back to electronics - we get exactly what we deserve, neither more nor less. It is entirely possible to purchase well-made electronics that are maintainable and have a truly indefinite service life - with that maintenance. Including all consumer entertainment electronics in this household, the newest daily-driver type item is a 6-year old blue-ray player to match the 8 year old plasma TV. The oldest is a 1962 tube stereo amplifier. If hobby (and functional) electronics are included, that would be a 1919 5-tube home-brew TRF radio driving a Magnavox horn.

If that first pair of $3.29 pair of Chinese underwear stayed on the shelf for the $3.69 pair of home-country underwear, we would not have this issue. But we are all-to-fast ready to give up our neighbor's jobs to 'save' that $0.40. Not quite understanding that without our neighbor's jobs our own are not long for this world.

Sorry for the insertion of politics here - but feeling sorry for ourselves is the last collective and several refuges for cowards. And "Let George Do It" is how we got here in the first place. The Chinese have not "taken" one single job from any one any where at any time. They were handed each and every one of those jobs complete and together with the plea "PLEASE take this burden from us!"

And. Lest ye "first world" people think for one hummingbird heartbeat that control over *you* is not pitiless - consider how much *you* are regulated, and at every turn. Between taxes, leases, licenses of various sorts, permits, insurance, credit cards, cash-transaction limits, speed limits, stop lights, parking meters, passports, health insurance, deeds, titles and on and on and on...

Put another way, Anarchy Bitch.

Peter Wieck
Melrose Park, PA

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Sat, 26 Mar 2016 06:11:45 -0500, "Mark Zacharias"
<mark_zacharias@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

"Jeff Liebermann" <jeffl@cruzio.com> wrote in message
news:m4sbfbtj3k3b1hcjnca9t86o566tel84o4@4ax.com...
On Fri, 25 Mar 2016 05:48:15 -0500, "Mark Zacharias"
mark_zacharias@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

Cautioned him on speaker hook-ups, gave him our hand-out sheet explaining
speaker connections,
which also contains explicit warnings about shorting wires etc.

Put a 0.5 ohm xx watt resistor in series with each speaker. Paint the
resistors with whatever concoction generates the most noxious smoke
possible[1]. Then he shorts the leads again, the resistor(s) will get
hot, smoke, stink, and NOT blow up the output stages. There will be a
loss in output power, which presumably he won't notice unless he's
running low impedance or low efficiency speakers.


[1] Cotton soaked in propylene glycol or white mineral oil which is
what we used for wind tunnel airflow visualization. Propylene glycol
doesn't stink very much, but white mineral oil really reeks.

You, sir - are an evil Genius!
mz

Thank you. Think of it as a VERY slow blow fuse with a built in
"indicator". I suspect that even the most dense customer will
recognize smoke as an indication that perhaps something is very wrong.

Many years ago, when I was an aspiring juvenile delinquent, I removed
one end of a 3AG cartridge fuse, stuffed it with cotton, added a few
drops of 3-in-1 oil, installed a 0.5 ohm resistor, and somehow
soldered it back together without starting a fire. I'll pretend not
to remember how I did that. The plan was to make some sort of bomb to
irritate some of my friends. Instead of exploding, it produced a
substantial amount of smoke and attracted some unwanted official
attention. While I don't believe that the world needs a smoking fuse,
a similar leaded component might sell to like minded dangerous
individuals, such as myself, as an over current alerting system. With
some additional complexity, I could add a chemical timer set to
slightly longer than the warranty period. I have some ideas on how to
do an SMT version.

Hmmm.... Kickstarter perhaps?

--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Fri, 25 Mar 2016 20:52:58 -0700 (PDT), John Heath
<heathjohn2@gmail.com> wrote:

I have heard this argument too many times as if the costumer
is responsible for electrical engineering issues. The customer
paid for the amplifier leading a profit for the manufacturer.
It is the manufacturer that is responsible to made sure the
amplifier is idiot proof. Amplifiers have current limiting
circuits which means you can sort the outputs all day long
without any damage. If the manufacturer can not be bothered
to be responsible for their own engineering leading to output
transistor failure than they are in the wrong business.
There is no such thing as a costumer that is wrong as he is
the one that is paying the money. The failure is always up
stream from the costumer. I will now get of my soap box.

In the past, when I needed some entertainment, I would read product
liability horror stories. It eventually became somewhat of a hobby
until I was overwhelmed with horror stories.

Your position is quite among customers and product liability
attorneys. The legal responsibility is a moving target, varying
depending on court decisions, commercial law, and both state and
federal laws. Over the years, it has swung in both directions, but at
no time has it ever been absolute. The manufacturer, retailer, and
customer all have their areas of responsibility with considerable
overlap.

Very briefly, the courts have recognized that manufacturers cannot
produce a 100% safe and reliable product. If they did, nobody could
afford it anyway. One compromise is that if a manufacturer can show
due diligence in informing the end user that there are some hazards
involved in using the product, and the customer is assumed to have
been so informed, then the customer cannot claim that they destroyed
the product or injured themselves in the manner specified in the
documentation. This is where the ever growing mass of legal documents
and "read me first" papers originate. If the manual warns that
shorting the speaker output is a bad idea, the court will not award
the customer damages if they ignore the warning and short the speaker
leads.

The other side of this coin is whether a "reasonable person" expects
products to operate in some manner. In this case, if literally every
other audio amp manufacturer includes speaker short circuit protection
in their products, but this one does not, a reasonable person would
probably expect that every amp is short circuit proof. Depending on
the court, that could be considered sufficient for the customer to
claim that they did not receive a product "suitable for the intended
purpose".

With today's low cost of electronic manufacturing, it is often cheaper
for a manufacturer to replace the few amps that a few clueless
customers manage to blow up, than to include protection circuitry in
every product. For example, if adding the protection circuitry
required an additional $5 in parts and Yamaha made 250,000 of these
amps, then that's $1.25 million in "excess" cost. However, replacing
perhaps 1,000 amplifiers, at a cost to sales of about $50/ea or
$50,000 is much cheaper. This is probably why Yamaha honored the
warranty.

If you have an questions, please consult a real attorney.

--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

 

[Adrian Caspersz]

On 25/03/16 15:17, Ralph Mowery wrote:

"Mark Zacharias" <mark_zacharias@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:LH8Jy.77627$NL6.55721@fx22.iad...
How is it a grown man cannot understand the concept of keeping two wires
separate?


Reminds me of when I was working on the CB radios around 1973. Fellow
brought in one that had a diode inside that is connected across the 12 volt
power line that shorts and blowes the fuse when connected in reverse. I
asked him it he hooked it up backwards and he said probably as he moved it
from his truck to the car. About a week later he was back in with the same
problem. Repaired it, and a week later he was back again, but said it would
be the last time for me to repair it. I said "oh". And he said he bought
another radio so he could leave them and not have to swap back and forth.

A friend blew up the RF power amp on an Icom 2m Transceiver by reverse
connecting his car DC supply to the rig. A rig borrowed from the club
shack. Much tears ;-(

It did have the diode that you describe reverse connected across the
supply. Unfortunately that diode either didn't conduct fast enough, or
decided it wasn't going to be part of the game and went open circuit
before the fuse (and the amp... ) ...


--
Adrian C

 

[Ralph Mowery]

"Adrian Caspersz" <email@here.invalid> wrote in message
news:dlo26cFqgaqU1@mid.individual.net...
..

A friend blew up the RF power amp on an Icom 2m Transceiver by reverse
connecting his car DC supply to the rig. A rig borrowed from the club
shack. Much tears ;-(

It did have the diode that you describe reverse connected across the
supply. Unfortunately that diode either didn't conduct fast enough, or
decided it wasn't going to be part of the game and went open circuit
before the fuse (and the amp... ) ...

Usually the most expensive part blows open to protect the fuse.

 

[pfjw@aol.com]

On Saturday, March 26, 2016 at 5:17:54 PM UTC-4, jurb...@gmail.com wrote:

pf, politics is what started this shit.

I see you think like me to some extent. Have ANY ideas on how to fix this shit without removing 90 % of the population ? I can't figure anything out.. Even massive killing wouldn't work. NOTHING will work.

I am not so sure we think much alike. My politics as-practiced are considerably left of center, although not quite socialist. Mostly based on personal responsibility, the social contract and the basic fact that the world owes me nothing.

At the same time, the Human Race if seen as the functional equivalent of mold on an orange is doing a very efficient job of killing itself off, and apparently sooner rather than later. No problem for me, likely not for the kids either. But the grandkids are going to have a brutal time of it. A few tens of thousands of years from now, we will of interest only to whatever passes for archaeology and paleontology at the time, if even that. So, why sweat the small stuff with that perspective?

As of this moment, and based on present absolutely provable facts and long-term trends, the Malaysian archipelago land mass will be reduced by 70% (or more) by 2050. The present population is just under 30,000,000. And there is not one damned thing that you, I, or anyone else, collectively and severally, can do about that. AND, that is one single example. Florida - what happens when 30% of that state can no longer support either farming or a human population? New Jersey (small loss)? The entire Gulf Coast? Not to mention California. Just keeping it "American" here - the rest of you are also quite done, just not fully aware of how done, quite yet.

That we are fucked is absolute. That it is of our own making, equally so. But as a species we have always been better and destruction than at creation.. Always. This particular disaster is pandemic, having nothing to do with race, color, creed, nation, state, orientation or personal preferences. Like a flat tax, we are all equally affected whether we like it or not.

Peter Wieck
Melrose Park, PA

 

I think collectivism and individualism can coexist, but we have not figured the method.

 

[Jon Elson]

Tim Schwartz wrote:

I'll have side with the manufacturer here. It is not possible to make
any product 'idiot proof' as someone will come up with a bigger idiot.

I make a line of PWM servo amplifiers, using a bunch of TO-220 FETs. A
mechanical engineer bought some, and saw those little plastic things clamped
under the transistors and decided they couldn't conduct heat well, so he
took them out, put a glob of thermal grease under them and clamped them down
tight. Hooked the whole system up and turned it on. There was a
thunderclap and a huge flash, and everything he had bought from me was
reduced to charred rubble. The little plastic things were good Bergquist
thermal conductive pads, and work fine to allow the amp to run at 20 A
continuously. I fixed one amp just to see how bad it was, well every semi
in the thing was toast. It must have got +80 V into the +12 logic supply.

That's the biggest idiot I've had so far...

Jon

 

On Friday, March 25, 2016 at 8:12:24 AM UTC-7, Ralph Mowery wrote:

"Mark Zacharias" <mark_zacharias@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:LH8Jy.77627$NL6.55721@fx22.iad...
How is it a grown man cannot understand the concept of keeping two wires
separate?


Reminds me of when I was working on the CB radios around 1973. Fellow
brought in one that had a diode inside that is connected across the 12 volt
power line that shorts and blowes the fuse when connected in reverse. I
asked him it he hooked it up backwards and he said probably as he moved it
from his truck to the car. About a week later he was back in with the same
problem. Repaired it, and a week later he was back again, but said it would
be the last time for me to repair it. I said "oh". And he said he bought
another radio so he could leave them and not have to swap back and forth.

Had one like yours with the fuse and protect diode blowing. Second time I had to repair it I checked what he was actually doing and found the reverse polarized battery. His car was an early '60 Ford van with a generator, NOT an alternator and when the battery was dead he jumped it backwards and converted it to positive ground.

G˛

 

[Trevor Wilson]

On 26/03/2016 10:22 PM, Mark Zacharias wrote:

"Trevor Wilson" <trevor@SPAMBLOCKrageaudio.com.au> wrote in message
news:dlmorsFg49tU2@mid.individual.net...
On 25/03/2016 9:48 PM, Mark Zacharias wrote:
How is it a grown man cannot understand the concept of keeping two wires
separate?

Fixed a Yamaha RX-A2010 with a blown channel back in December.

Under warranty.

Big job.

Cautioned him on speaker hook-ups, gave him our hand-out sheet
explaining speaker connections,
which also contains explicit warnings about shorting wires etc.

Nevertheless he brought it back this week with the same channel blown
again.

It was all I could do not to just go off on the guy. He admitted fooling
around with the wires while the unit was powered up, and that the wires
had crossed. Exactly the sort of thing I had "educated" him about.

Fucking idiot. Lucky for him Yamaha is covering it again, and we needed
the work anyway.

Shit for brains god damn idiot. I knew better that this when I was
sixteen fucking years old!

I'm reminded of Chevy Chase's rant in Christmas Vacation...


Mark Z.



**I'm suprised that the shitbox Yammy can't handle a short. Part of
the test procedure for all the old 1970s Marantz amps, was to throw a
short circuit across the outputs. If it didn't survive, it would not
be given back to the owner (until it did).

--
Trevor Wilson
www.rageaudio.com.au

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If I recall correctly that procedure used a variac and the test stopped
an a certain current (I think it was 4 amps) through the amp meter which
was the only "load". A modern amp would pass that test as well, but the
microprocessor-based turn-on and protection circuits would have to be
bypassed.

Mark Z.

**Apart from the Variac™, pretty much it. I must admit some trepidation
the first few times I was required to perform this test.


--
Trevor Wilson
www.rageaudio.com.au

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>"His car was an early '60 Ford van with a generator, NOT an >alternator and when the battery was dead he jumped it backwards and >converted it to positive ground. "

Yup. And if the radio was all tubes it would run just fine. No way to tell without a meter.

 

[pfjw@aol.com]

On Sunday, March 27, 2016 at 5:03:32 PM UTC-4, Michael Terrell wrote:

"pfjw@aol.com" wrote:

N_Cook wrote:

I have a customer who keeps breaking things, often fatally, because he
picks up the nearest wallwart, having mislaid the original one, because
it looks the same size black lump and the connector pushes in, so it
must be ok .

Once upon a time, there was movement to color-code and size-code these things... It never quite took.


Have you seen these adapters?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/171829811403

I have. Sadly, it was the south end where the color-coding never took, not the north end.

Peter Wieck
Melrose Park, PA

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

"pfjw@aol.com" wrote:

N_Cook wrote:

I have a customer who keeps breaking things, often fatally, because he
picks up the nearest wallwart, having mislaid the original one, because
it looks the same size black lump and the connector pushes in, so it
must be ok .

Once upon a time, there was movement to color-code and size-code these things... It never quite took.

Have you seen these adapters?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/171829811403

 

[Cydrome Leader]

jurb6006@gmail.com wrote:

"the RCA speaker outputs were as silly as the preamp to amp shunts >stuck
into the RCA jacks at the factory. "

I would actually like to have a switch on the front panel of an amp to switch the pre out/main in loop rather than their jumpers. Too easy to lose.

And then my buddy got this Marantz, a really nice one, 2325. It has the type of jack where you plug something in and it breaks the connection. I'd much rather have a switch, even if it is on the back and many of them are.

Another thing I noticed about those shunts is ain't none of the MFs ever the same size. I have had a drawerfull of them and still had to make shunts out of 12 gauge wire because none of them fit.

When would you use a diferent preamp, or different power amp in an
integrated unit anyways? Anything with the shunts was already packed with
all sorts of silly inputs to start with.

 

[Cydrome Leader]

Trevor Wilson <trevor@spamblockrageaudio.com.au> wrote:

On 25/03/2016 9:48 PM, Mark Zacharias wrote:
How is it a grown man cannot understand the concept of keeping two wires
separate?

Fixed a Yamaha RX-A2010 with a blown channel back in December.

Under warranty.

Big job.

Cautioned him on speaker hook-ups, gave him our hand-out sheet
explaining speaker connections,
which also contains explicit warnings about shorting wires etc.

Nevertheless he brought it back this week with the same channel blown
again.

It was all I could do not to just go off on the guy. He admitted fooling
around with the wires while the unit was powered up, and that the wires
had crossed. Exactly the sort of thing I had "educated" him about.

Fucking idiot. Lucky for him Yamaha is covering it again, and we needed
the work anyway.

Shit for brains god damn idiot. I knew better that this when I was
sixteen fucking years old!

I'm reminded of Chevy Chase's rant in Christmas Vacation...


Mark Z.



**I'm suprised that the shitbox Yammy can't handle a short. Part of the
test procedure for all the old 1970s Marantz amps, was to throw a short
circuit across the outputs. If it didn't survive, it would not be given
back to the owner (until it did).

It is sort of sad it can't handle that. Just a few warranty service calls
would pay for hundreds or thousands of fuse to have been installed.

 

[Trevor Wilson]

On 29/03/2016 3:20 AM, Cydrome Leader wrote:

Trevor Wilson <trevor@spamblockrageaudio.com.au> wrote:
On 25/03/2016 9:48 PM, Mark Zacharias wrote:
How is it a grown man cannot understand the concept of keeping two wires
separate?

Fixed a Yamaha RX-A2010 with a blown channel back in December.

Under warranty.

Big job.

Cautioned him on speaker hook-ups, gave him our hand-out sheet
explaining speaker connections,
which also contains explicit warnings about shorting wires etc.

Nevertheless he brought it back this week with the same channel blown
again.

It was all I could do not to just go off on the guy. He admitted fooling
around with the wires while the unit was powered up, and that the wires
had crossed. Exactly the sort of thing I had "educated" him about.

Fucking idiot. Lucky for him Yamaha is covering it again, and we needed
the work anyway.

Shit for brains god damn idiot. I knew better that this when I was
sixteen fucking years old!

I'm reminded of Chevy Chase's rant in Christmas Vacation...


Mark Z.



**I'm suprised that the shitbox Yammy can't handle a short. Part of the
test procedure for all the old 1970s Marantz amps, was to throw a short
circuit across the outputs. If it didn't survive, it would not be given
back to the owner (until it did).

It is sort of sad it can't handle that. Just a few warranty service calls
would pay for hundreds or thousands of fuse to have been installed.

**Fuses open in seconds. Semiconductors can fail in MILLISECONDS. Active
current limiting is the best solution.

--
Trevor Wilson
www.rageaudio.com.au

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"When would you use a diferent preamp, or different power amp in an
integrated unit anyways? Anything with the shunts was already packed >with
all sorts of silly inputs to start with. "

Preamps can make as big a difference in the sound as power amps. People also get to liking how they hook up, all their shit fits. They like the tone controls, and that is a big one. some of those old 25 WPC Marantzes had fantastic preamps and tuners, but now the guy went and bought some speakerzillas and needs more power. So he picks up an ampzilla somewhere but wants the rest of his system to stay the same. He likes how it looks and sounds, just needs more power.

That's why, and it really is not audiophoolery, just one of thoise things.

I had a Marantz 4270 I ran in strsapped mode for the front to get the more power (clipped at 154 watts per channel in bridged mode) and used the rear pre outs to feed a Sansui 771 into 2.3 ohms for the back which had modified speakers. They originally had passive radiators but I put speakers in there instead. Then I had to use an EQ (Soundcraftsmen PE2217) to get the sound right.

Purists can bitch and moan about using EQ like that but what about the Bose 901 ? The EQ for that has about a 30 dB range that a standard graphic EQ cannot do. So if that is OK then my system was OK.

All of this shit can sound different, so if you got a receiver or amp and like the sound, you can keep it. Also, people are getting back into vinyl and phono preamps are not all created equal. All over the place the audiophiles say my Soundcraftsmen has a shitty phono stage, that it sounds harsh. Well I never used it, I used the EQ and it is one of the best EQs I have ever seen. Uses real coils, and the way it is configured, when you get to the extremes in the ranges, they are pretty much effectively in parallel. the chip based ones cannot do that and give you camel humps in the response. I can show you on a scope with a 1 KHz square wave.

People do crazier shit than that when it comes to stereo equipment. Some go nuts and claim one speaker wire sounds better, I do not go for that. Unless the resistance is very high it makes no difference. And like the cables, RCA type, the only thing that matters in them is the capacitance per foot. A cable from a turntable with a moving coil cartridge, maybe. then you might need superior shielding. but for the rest of it, for electronic sources like a CD player or tape deck, you almost do not need shielded cables. I'll use Romex from a CD p;layer to an amp and nobody will hear the difference, or might actually think the Romex sounds better !

Learning a little bit of math and electronics makes you aware of what really matters and what does not.

 

"**Fuses open in seconds. Semiconductors can fail in MILLISECONDS. >Active
current limiting is the best solution. "

Yeah like when seconds count, the cops will be there in minutes. Completely true. The problem is the implementation.

Active current limiting tends to make bad bad distortion on low impedance loads. It sounds as if a speaker is blown or a woofer is bottoming out.

I have tried to figure out a better way but am at a loss on that, so I understand why they did it. It protects their product from abuse and unnecessary warranty claims. And it was cheap, couple transistors, diodes, maybe six resistors in all.

The alternative is to use a relay and a latch, which is run through the uProcessor on newer shit and it reads "Protection" on the display. I am not fond of those type of circuit because it makes it harder to troubleshoot.

I think they should make amp ready to drive one ohm loads, but then they would be more expensive and sales would be lost.

 

[Trevor Wilson]

On 29/03/2016 11:39 AM, jurb6006@gmail.com wrote:

"**Fuses open in seconds. Semiconductors can fail in MILLISECONDS.
Active current limiting is the best solution. "

Yeah like when seconds count, the cops will be there in minutes.
Completely true. The problem is the implementation.

Active current limiting tends to make bad bad distortion on low
impedance loads. It sounds as if a speaker is blown or a woofer is
bottoming out.

**Nonsense. There are several methods of implementing current limiting,
which do not impact severely on sound quality. If the current limiting
can be kept out of the global NFB loop, then the result can be very benign.

I have tried to figure out a better way but am at a loss on that, so
I understand why they did it. It protects their product from abuse
and unnecessary warranty claims. And it was cheap, couple
transistors, diodes, maybe six resistors in all.

The alternative is to use a relay and a latch, which is run through
the uProcessor on newer shit and it reads "Protection" on the
display. I am not fond of those type of circuit because it makes it
harder to troubleshoot.

I think they should make amp ready to drive one ohm loads, but then
they would be more expensive and sales would be lost.

**That is the way high quality products do it.



--
Trevor Wilson
www.rageaudio.com.au

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