Punch 150 Butcher

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Well, I can say this with pride, I am NEVER purchasing a used amp off of ebay again, no matter how nostalgic I feel. This is the third amp that I purchased off of ebay that was supposed to be working, and this was the worst hack job I have ever seen.

See anything missing here?
Where_Are_the_fuses2.jpg


How about here?
Where_Are_the_fuses1.jpg


I guess this is what happens when you cut the external harness and hard wire your internal fuses.
Burnt_Resistor.jpg


I don't want to tell you how furious I am right now! I hope this seller isn't awaiting my positive feedback before he will receive his funds, because he will NEVER get it out of me!
 
I hope none of the fets are blown. The seller swears the amp works, and he got it from a "friend" to run his 6x9s. My Orion 250 SX arrived the same way (ETA: from a different seller with great feedback too) and I sent it to Chris @ dB-R. I am going to bench test, then try fix this one myself... Well, as soon as I figure out the values of these resistors.

No one happens to have a third generation, pre-HD, Rockford Fosgate Punch 150 schematic handy, do they?

-Chris

ETA: I can't seem to remember the proper values for the internal fuses. If anyone else has them right off hand, that would be appreciated too!
 
Wow, soldered on even. I've had pretty good luck with working amps I bought, even some broken ones worked fine. Did get a couple broken amps that were completely useless. Don't buy many nice old amps but did get a nakamichi once that was missing parts not just a cover. The buyer made right with me though.
 
Early Punch 150's were Bi-polar transistor 2n6488 and 2N6491 PPI/Orion type outputs. Later they went to BUZ-11 Mosfet all of these are still pretty commonly available.
Yours appears to be the 2N64XX version, as it has large drivers transistors. The drivers are D40D8 and D41D8 and the can fun to locate.

I have seen this failure mode before exactly down to the desoldered emitter resistors and the smaller carbon resistor failures. These were the fuses after someone bridged the fuse holders with wire :whazzat:

I would say that your outputs are toast, and most probably followed by the drivers. The burnt 1/4 watt resistors value escapes me for now, sorry...

Proper fuse sizes should be marked on the bottom plate. 3.5 and 5 ampere come to mind, with 7.5 ampere being over spec, and there were 30 amp version in this 5X20MM size that many folks used as buss bars to replace the fusing so they only had to look at the amp after it had melted down like yours.

If you got the amp like this, it was DOA for sure, shame, sorry to see people still do this sort of thing on E-bay.....
 
I have seen a lot of this done to the 75's and 150's. I have a few boards here the same way. (thin wire or solder instead of fuses) It was common when you took it to someone who was a "kinda" repair tech. When I ran out of the oddball (hard to find sometimes) fuses, I would change them out to the blade fuses. Seen a lot of them like this. The resistors are another matter, but the fuse jumpers, common on the 150's and 75's. Even the rare 45's with fuses...

Just take some solder wick, and soak up the solder. Easy fix on the fuses...
 
1moreamp said:
Early Punch 150's were Bi-polar transistor 2n6488 and 2N6491 PPI/Orion type outputs. Later they went to BUZ-11 Mosfet all of these are still pretty commonly available.
Yours appears to be the 2N64XX version, as it has large drivers transistors. The drivers are D40D8 and D41D8 and the can fun to locate.

I have seen this failure mode before exactly down to the desoldered emitter resistors and the smaller carbon resistor failures. These were the fuses after someone bridged the fuse holders with wire :whazzat:

I would say that your outputs are toast, and most probably followed by the drivers. The burnt 1/4 watt resistors value escapes me for now, sorry...

Proper fuse sizes should be marked on the bottom plate. 3.5 and 5 ampere come to mind, with 7.5 ampere being over spec, and there were 30 amp version in this 5X20MM size that many folks used as buss bars to replace the fusing so they only had to look at the amp after it had melted down like yours.

If you got the amp like this, it was DOA for sure, shame, sorry to see people still do this sort of thing on E-bay.....

Not only did I receive the amp like this, I had to pull the bottom plate off to get to the power wire because it was so dang short and inside of the case. Imagine my surprise when I noticed that I will NEVER be able to apply power to this amp in its current state!

Sadly, this is the THIRD amp out of the last three I have purchased off of eBay that arrived with something wrong. Sadly, this was the most butchered of the three and the seller has until Saturday before I go through the dispute resolution center!
If that doesn't work, I will dispute the charge on my Credit Card!

These were my last three bad eBay amps:

Orion 250 SX - blown resistors and FETS

Linear Power 1502IQ - blown speaker relay and bad gain POT

This Punch 150 - total hack job!
 
0ldSch00lf00l

I guess its just a sign of the times we live in...Shame.. But your amp is fixable and it will live to play again if repaired... With regards to current e-bay policy changes they DO NOT refund for "significantly not as described " any longer, please check there new policy's...If I were you I would do a charge back on your card and be done with it... Just trying to help you avoid any more pain....:)
 
1moreamp said:
0ldSch00lf00l

I guess its just a sign of the times we live in...Shame.. But your amp is fixable and it will live to play again if repaired... With regards to current e-bay policy changes they DO NOT refund for "significantly not as described " any longer, please check there new policy's...If I were you I would do a charge back on your card and be done with it... Just trying to help you avoid any more pain....:)


Well, this seller was actually one of the good guys! He refunded my money. Rather than sending it back to him, I am thinking of offering him some money to purchase the amp off of him for parts.

Any idea as to what I should offer him with regards to a parts piece?
 
I am sorry for not following up on this. Rather than attempt to repair the amp, I sent it back to the seller, and he re-sold it for parts with a $40 "buy it now". I know I could have made it live to play again, but it wasn't worth it to me. Instead, I have decided to focus all my efforts on getting Linear Power amps from here on out. I owned as many as six Punch 150s at one time back in the good old days, and now I regret selling them all:(

Regardless, it is time to make new memories with a different brand of old school. Well, either that or buy Tru Technology amplifiers for my midrange and high frequency applications:D
 
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