Oh god that reminds me of the McIntosh rep who used to do in-store clinics at our store. He used an electric screwdriver on all those 1/4" hex head screws on that classic gear, and ju-ust stripped the crap out of them. Sheesh.
I have customers telling me all the time while watching me work, "You need an electric screwdriver." Actually, no, I don't, thanks.
I have customers telling me all the time while watching me work, "You need an electric screwdriver." Actually, no, I don't, thanks.
Before looking at the pic, I thought you gave something a smack and it started working again, hee!
Here's one for the book. I'm sorry I don't have pics; it just didn't occur to me at the time.
Classic pair: Hammond B3 organ / Leslie 122 speaker in a local church. Symptom: Sound cuts in & out, also LOUD humming noises.
Started it up - no sound for about a minute, then suddenly BLASTED. Checked the 6-pin tone cabinet cable connector at the base of the organ console, no problem. Walked up to the speaker and jiggled the cable - LOUD hum. OK, so the connector is getting funky; happens a lot. Went to pull it out of the amp chassis and it wouldn't budge. After a good hard tug, I discovered that the reason it didn't want to come off was because someone had glued the pins into the socket with what looked like contact cement!
After fetching a can of acetone, I proceeded trying to clean up the mess. The male connector on the amp chassis was easy enough; finished in a few minutes. The female cable connector was another story; after trying for awhile to douche out the socket pins, I finally gave up & replaced the socket. It was probably loose and/or corroded anyway; this would explain the "innovative" repair attempt I suppose.
In 40 years at this job, I can't remember anything quite like this.
Classic pair: Hammond B3 organ / Leslie 122 speaker in a local church. Symptom: Sound cuts in & out, also LOUD humming noises.
Started it up - no sound for about a minute, then suddenly BLASTED. Checked the 6-pin tone cabinet cable connector at the base of the organ console, no problem. Walked up to the speaker and jiggled the cable - LOUD hum. OK, so the connector is getting funky; happens a lot. Went to pull it out of the amp chassis and it wouldn't budge. After a good hard tug, I discovered that the reason it didn't want to come off was because someone had glued the pins into the socket with what looked like contact cement!
After fetching a can of acetone, I proceeded trying to clean up the mess. The male connector on the amp chassis was easy enough; finished in a few minutes. The female cable connector was another story; after trying for awhile to douche out the socket pins, I finally gave up & replaced the socket. It was probably loose and/or corroded anyway; this would explain the "innovative" repair attempt I suppose.
In 40 years at this job, I can't remember anything quite like this.
Hi Jim the Oldbie,
I use an electric cordless drill sometimes, and an electric screwdriver. The secret to using these is that you need to get one with a clutch. It also helps to know how to adjust it!
Horror story? Sure, a customer brought in a Teac A-103 cassette deck. It wouldn't play anymore and it smelled heavily of ... WD-40. He went on to explain that it was squeaking. So, he sprayed everything to make sure it didn't squeak anymore. Well, it didn't. Turns out that he was very thorough. He got everything, including the clutch packs, idlers, belts - you name it. At the time we gave him an estimate to rebuild the entire mechanism, also cleaning it and lubricating it again for $250. He accepted! What people also don't know is that WD-40 is a solvent, not a lubricant (not really). So he also destroyed all the lubricated surfaces until they were cleaned and lubricated with the proper stuff again.
The deck turned out perfectly and was calibrated bang on. The customer called back saying it had never sounded so good. Well, what does that tell you about factory calibrations? They get them in the ball park, but almost never right on the money with the exception of Revox and Nakamichi.
You know, you just can't make this stuff up!
-Chris
I use an electric cordless drill sometimes, and an electric screwdriver. The secret to using these is that you need to get one with a clutch. It also helps to know how to adjust it!
Horror story? Sure, a customer brought in a Teac A-103 cassette deck. It wouldn't play anymore and it smelled heavily of ... WD-40. He went on to explain that it was squeaking. So, he sprayed everything to make sure it didn't squeak anymore. Well, it didn't. Turns out that he was very thorough. He got everything, including the clutch packs, idlers, belts - you name it. At the time we gave him an estimate to rebuild the entire mechanism, also cleaning it and lubricating it again for $250. He accepted! What people also don't know is that WD-40 is a solvent, not a lubricant (not really). So he also destroyed all the lubricated surfaces until they were cleaned and lubricated with the proper stuff again.
The deck turned out perfectly and was calibrated bang on. The customer called back saying it had never sounded so good. Well, what does that tell you about factory calibrations? They get them in the ball park, but almost never right on the money with the exception of Revox and Nakamichi.
You know, you just can't make this stuff up!
-Chris
With a very low success rate no doubt.
Hi Jim the Oldbie,
Yes, some of the zany things I'm sure everyone has seen could fill a book. The title would be something like "Don't do this!".
We've seen everything from shipping mishaps to cockpit error, knife wounds to serious zaps, cat pee to alcoholic beverages and destructive "technicians" to attempted helpful (but really questionable) modifications. It just never ends.
-Chris
LaserPro Mercury III
Design head at my son's school fancies I know a thing or two about electrical stuff because I am trying to run an after school electronics activity making CMOY head amps. HA! Got him fooled.
Not long after they took delivery of the machine, one of the staff plugged the lovely big laser engraver directly into a wall socket rather than into the power conditioner. And then told of how it went pop!!
Not fixed yet. Found a blown thermistor inrush current limiter (10ohm 8A) in the very nice MeanWell switching psu.
BUT damned if I can get a thermistor here in Vientiane!! Blank looks all round when I go into electrical supply places in town - would think with the dirty mains power thermistor failure would be an often enough occurrence that they would be available - maybe not talking to the right people. Have to either wait for a colleague to travel from somewhere or wait for delivery from Aliexpress and hope it actually arrives.
Also magnetic switches on front access panel are faulty so currently have them shorted while I troubleshoot the rest.
Bonus is that I will have access to it once repaired - be able to engrave some front panels etc for my projects!!
Design head at my son's school fancies I know a thing or two about electrical stuff because I am trying to run an after school electronics activity making CMOY head amps. HA! Got him fooled.
Not long after they took delivery of the machine, one of the staff plugged the lovely big laser engraver directly into a wall socket rather than into the power conditioner. And then told of how it went pop!!
Not fixed yet. Found a blown thermistor inrush current limiter (10ohm 8A) in the very nice MeanWell switching psu.
BUT damned if I can get a thermistor here in Vientiane!! Blank looks all round when I go into electrical supply places in town - would think with the dirty mains power thermistor failure would be an often enough occurrence that they would be available - maybe not talking to the right people. Have to either wait for a colleague to travel from somewhere or wait for delivery from Aliexpress and hope it actually arrives.
Also magnetic switches on front access panel are faulty so currently have them shorted while I troubleshoot the rest.
Bonus is that I will have access to it once repaired - be able to engrave some front panels etc for my projects!!
We used to joke around the shop about guys who bought a $20 radio shack multimeter and then assumed that they were now a technician.
The "golden screwdriver" crowd....
And the ones who liked to argue with me over the front counter, telling me they're "engineers", so that is supposed to impress me.
It doesn't.
Speaking of which (copied/pasted from my post in another forum, please forgive my laziness):
When I was 16, I bought a crappy underdash 8-track player and installed it in the family sedan. It soon developed an intermittent crackling noise in one speaker that was irritating as hell.
One afternoon, I was cruising around with a friend, trying to listen to the "new" Jethro Tull album, A Passion Play, but the tape player was acting up badly. I'd jiggle the slide-out mount and it would be OK for awhile, then that damn noise would return. Finally I twisted around a little in the seat and gave that thing one f890ing good KICK... and the crackling noise disappeared. Never heard it again. That tape deck worked like a charm until we sold the car.
That was the first and last time I ever had any success with that particular repair procedure (not for lack of trying!).
When I was 16, I bought a crappy underdash 8-track player and installed it in the family sedan. It soon developed an intermittent crackling noise in one speaker that was irritating as hell.
One afternoon, I was cruising around with a friend, trying to listen to the "new" Jethro Tull album, A Passion Play, but the tape player was acting up badly. I'd jiggle the slide-out mount and it would be OK for awhile, then that damn noise would return. Finally I twisted around a little in the seat and gave that thing one f890ing good KICK... and the crackling noise disappeared. Never heard it again. That tape deck worked like a charm until we sold the car.
That was the first and last time I ever had any success with that particular repair procedure (not for lack of trying!).
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my fav tech abuse was a VCR deck and some 'tech' tried to straighten the inlet and tape guides because they were bent at an angle...
Had a new usb scope to fix.
Strange fault on a potential divider.
It should give 0v5 but was putting out a volt.
Buzzed out the pcb and couldn't find the problem.
In the end I pulled out the two resistors and found a short between a resistor leg and a close by via.
I don't understand why my meter didn't buzz as I checked for nearby shorts.
I can only blame the cheapo ebay DMM.
Strange fault on a potential divider.
It should give 0v5 but was putting out a volt.
Buzzed out the pcb and couldn't find the problem.
In the end I pulled out the two resistors and found a short between a resistor leg and a close by via.
I don't understand why my meter didn't buzz as I checked for nearby shorts.
I can only blame the cheapo ebay DMM.
I remember when I were a young lad I installed an 8 track in my car.
This was long before I got into electronics.
I naively didn't fuse the player.
I was driving along when smoke started pouring out of the wiring.
I grabbed a handful of wires and ripped them out to stop the short.
Of course the wires were red hot and left burn marks across my palm.
I'm not a brute like you. But I had a similar result.
Friend and workmate had this spiffy '286 PC {with an EGA! and a LasterJet!! jealous}. But it started acting goofy. Lockups, crashes. The user was near blind and not super PC-savvy, but it happened to me often enough to know. The PC was haunted.
I tried the usual re-seating of RAM and CPU (I started on-call with Apple ][es). No luck.
He was the Piano Technician and the PC was in his workshop. There was piano-wood dust around (I did clean his fans, but wood-dust is not as bad as office paper-dust). He did little metalworking, but we knew the maintenance staff snuck-in and used his grinder and drillpress.
So I got an idea and a plan. Beat the crap out of his PC mobo's slots. He resisted, until it locked-up at a critical moment.
We took the PC to his bench. Removed the drives and about everything with a slot-connector. Turned it over top down. I gave it such a SMACK on the bottom. Re-assembled, and it never gave a lick of trouble again.
In a slightly different, but strangely related failure story, I got a service call for a phone system that was "acting goofy" and reboots didn't help. It was a Avaya Partner ACS system, so really reliable. It had been installed for just over a year in a foundry. The brilliant installation tech had mounted the system outside the office, and I noticed even there all kinds of black powder. Of course, it wasn't any harmless dirt based powder. It was powdered metal! That and the poor system was cooking in that environment. Foundries get stinking hot in the summer (and winter, but the heat is sort of welcomed then). Turned it off, opened the clam shells (case) and whacked the dust out, the used a paint brush. You should have seen the amount of powdered metal that came out, and the overheating marks on the power supplies.
The repair was successful, and we executed a work order to move the system into the office area. Problems mostly solved That poor system, tehy eventually replaced it with an Avaya IP Office. I don't think it will last as long, but I could be wrong about that.
-Chris
The repair was successful, and we executed a work order to move the system into the office area. Problems mostly solved That poor system, tehy eventually replaced it with an Avaya IP Office. I don't think it will last as long, but I could be wrong about that.
-Chris
Today I worked on yet another piece of gear containing a handful of those little blue Bourns 3386-style trimmers, several of which had become intermittent. Seems like this is inevitable with these parts after a certain number of years.
They're pretty well sealed, so no way to get any kind of cleaner into them. All I've managed to do is run 'em back & forth a bunch of times, to which they usually respond well, usually for a long time (i.e. years) before it happens again - but not always. Today's job was an example of the latter; it's only been a year or so since the last "burnishing."
I'll shoot the customer a quote for shotgunning the damn things (there's about 20 of them) with a full set of new ones. But it's hard to get excited about this idea, since the replacements will be the same part, and will eventually do the same thing again - assuming there haven't been any recent improvements to the design.
They're pretty well sealed, so no way to get any kind of cleaner into them. All I've managed to do is run 'em back & forth a bunch of times, to which they usually respond well, usually for a long time (i.e. years) before it happens again - but not always. Today's job was an example of the latter; it's only been a year or so since the last "burnishing."
I'll shoot the customer a quote for shotgunning the damn things (there's about 20 of them) with a full set of new ones. But it's hard to get excited about this idea, since the replacements will be the same part, and will eventually do the same thing again - assuming there haven't been any recent improvements to the design.
Hi Jim,
What are you working on?
I have a voltage standard with a similar problem, and it needs about $100 US my cost in trimmers. Then a complete calibration.
I am currently working on a voice mail server, an eOn series 1000. The serial port controlling integration has stopped responding and I should replace the motherboard. Know of any current motherboards that have ISA slots? Just need one for an 8 port voice card.
Next step tomorrow is to search for an old RS-232 card, deactivate the MB ports and slide the card in and hope OS/2 accepts the new hardware (which it most likely will). I have a large wastewater treatment plant riding on this one. Right now the system fails over to reception (but they got rid of that position years ago - oops!). So the office has to field all the calls and take messages just like in the bad old days. I might try to give them some more memory (OS/2 knows how to use it) as it only has 64 MB. More than enough to run, but slow doing database maintenance.
I'd really like to deliver this system tomorrow morning.
-Chris
What are you working on?
I have a voltage standard with a similar problem, and it needs about $100 US my cost in trimmers. Then a complete calibration.
I am currently working on a voice mail server, an eOn series 1000. The serial port controlling integration has stopped responding and I should replace the motherboard. Know of any current motherboards that have ISA slots? Just need one for an 8 port voice card.
Next step tomorrow is to search for an old RS-232 card, deactivate the MB ports and slide the card in and hope OS/2 accepts the new hardware (which it most likely will). I have a large wastewater treatment plant riding on this one. Right now the system fails over to reception (but they got rid of that position years ago - oops!). So the office has to field all the calls and take messages just like in the bad old days. I might try to give them some more memory (OS/2 knows how to use it) as it only has 64 MB. More than enough to run, but slow doing database maintenance.
I'd really like to deliver this system tomorrow morning.
-Chris