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Just turned on my Anthem amp1. I don't use it that often, but I could smell that things weren't normal. It played fine and nothing sounded strange. Tubes are about 6 years old but I haven't played them say over 100-200 hours in that time.
Is this something to be concerned about??
Follow Ups:
After two 8hr days of playing music, it seems that there was something that just got in there and burned up.
It seems fine now.
THanks for all the help!
It could be several things including dust, a component going bad, or even a bug being fried to a crisp. I had a strange smell coming from my SS amp and then discovered that it was my wife cooking breakfast. ;-)
That is funny, and all too true!
SInce you are familiar with the Pass and Pass sound, can you suggest a "digital" amp that I could switch to and still be happy?
The Pass X150 is an outstanding amp but it does idle a little warm.
My favorite "class D" amp was the Nuforce Ref 9.02 monoblocks. I believe there are newer versions out now including the Ref 9 V2 and V2 SE models. However, the 9.02 was outstanding.
The only issue (for some people) might be RFI that can get into your FM tuner or TV. I never had this problem as my antennas were outside with shielded coax cable coming into the gear. The Nuforce amps are very transparent with excellent frequency extension up top and down in the bass region with dynamics on par with the X150.
THanks Abe.
Unfortunately, I have a hard time buying a Nuforce product due to some of the behavior I have seen them exhibit on internet forums. And the fact that when I stopped in to hear those amps at a local dealer the dealer basically told me to go away because it would take at least 30 minutes to get them hooked up and I needed an apointment for something like that. What a load of crap.
I sold audio 15 years ago before I got a real job, and if I got paid for all the stuff I hooked up for people I would be able to buy a refrigerated room to house all the Pass gear I want and pay the hippies in Berkeley to look the other way as those amps just idle at 600ws or so.
maybe I am being stupid here, but that kind of stuff bugs me and I have a hard time giving them my dough.
Tube amps almost always have some sort of smell.
The heat they generate circulates air around them and smells come from transformers, tubes, oil caps etc.
Unless you smell or see smoke, it is probably nothing to be concerned about.
I do have a few more questions...
Is the sound distorting? Is the smell the same at idle or when driven hard?
Do you have a speaker load connected to the outputs at all times?
All the best,
Vic
P.S. I am on staff at Pacific Valve. Take my comments for what they worth
Hey Vic,
This was a very new smell and it did smell like smoke of some sort.
I did notice that my tweeter was disconnected on one speaker so that could have something to do with it. The amp is biwired to seperate high and low pass crossover boxes...so there was some load. The tweeter had been disconnected before and everything was fine.
The amp sounded fine and the smell didnt really change.
Would changing tubes help?
stop right there! Which speaker? If the cables ends touched while the amp was up and running you may have the cause in hand. A dead short at the speaker cable end can well be fatal.
gary
Gary
It wasn't a short. It just wasn't connected. It is hard to explain, but I am testing things and thin wires can come loose when you kick the outboard crossover boxes. THe wire never left the binding post, but it wasn't connected either.
ANyhow, today seems to be better, so maybe something got in there.
Tubes are not in my future due to stuff like this and the heat. I'll be saying by to my Pass too for similiar reasons.
Could be that the amp is dusty inside and you are smelling the dust burning when the amp is hot. If an electronic component is heating up but not to the point of smoking, you will definately be able to smell that as it has a distinct odor.
If a tube is going bad, you can sometimes spot that as it will be brighter/hotter than other similar tubes.
Thoroughly clean the amp inside and out with compressed air and while your inside, closely look at all the components for any sign of heat damage.
Cheers
Thanks Kenster.
I'll pop the hood and check it out!
you probably have a tube going bad, and in the process taking out the biasing resistor that sets beside it.
gary
Gary
Is there a way to tell which one? And shouldnt they last a bit longer than a few hundred hours??
the bias resistor is located just to right of the tube, and it's a good idea to go ahead and change it when retubing. If the bias factor gets too high it will of course cook the resistor. Also when changing the tubes (you must do it in matched pairs); you have to burn in the tubes and set the bias number (about 280 to 325). Normally takes 20 to 30 hours to get them to stabilize. The guys at The Parts Connection know more about these amps than anybody else.
gary
Gary
Tube equipment didn't use to be this unreliable. I suspect that the tubes were of much better quality and probably they didn't attempt to drive so much current through either back in their heyday of the 1950s, 60s.
I think it is a good idea to open up the baby and just blow the dust off every now and then as well.
auto biasing is a rather new thing when compaired to the existance of tube amps. And some still think it dosn't do the job all that well (I'm not going there). Now back to the Anthem amp. I just recently gave mine away to a friend that was in bad need of an amp. It still played even though it has a bad tube in the right bank. The four power tubes in the amp are the OEM supplied ones, and I'd put the amp at about ten years old. That just isn't all that bad in my book. Especially when you look at what the amp cost new verses the rest of the world.
gary
Gary
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