Another negligent fool has failed to destroy this fine chip. 
My intention was not to destroy it, but to improve it. I bought a few caps, resistors, thicker wires, proper speaker ports and started learning how to solder on my new SI amp. Not a smart idea, but I just had to do it. I'm normaly not a DIY guy, but I was thrilled to mod my amp. It played beautifully right from the box (ok, the first day it sounded awful, but afterwards...) and I wanted to improve it even further.
I unscrewed the bolts, twisted the plastic and el cheapo speaker ports, unsoldered many things, done a lot of scratches on pcb, burned many elements on it by my only (oversized) sodering rod and generaly done a lot of nasty things to the poor fella. To make a long story short: two days after I was at my local TV repair shop and one of them was soldering my speaker ports to my T-amp
. Half the caps I bought were too big(I bought film caps) and they could not solder it on. Smaller SMD caps were unavailable in my little town(second biggest town in my country, btw 
) so I could only order them from some website and wait for weeks. I was tired of everything and just wanted to go back in time and listen to some unmodded T-amp music. After they were done with it, I took my amp home and soldered(now a lot more skillfully) a battery compartment to the amp so I can finally listen to some music. I checked the wires position with a brief look on t-amp jpeg on my monitor instead looking at the actual pcb labels. That was a big mistake. I turned the amp on and the little LED was also on. I figured everything is ok and I've manged not to destroy the amp. Phew!
-But where is the sound? I can't hear anything, I'll turn the volume up 😱 . *PFFFFFFFT*
A tiny but obvious white smoke started lifting up from the chip. Or was it from the big cap I soldered? Or from...? I don't know where from, but I know this is the end of my T-amp. I spent days looking for webshop that delivers to my small country and has T-amps on stock and than waited another 10 days for it. Chip was breaking in for a few days and finally I spent another 4 days on this modding project. It all went away with that white smoke. I wanted to start a fight, get drunk, drive like a maniac and destroy someones faith in the same time. Angry and depressed, rageing in silence.
5 minutes after that, i desoldered and soldered a few things on again and saw that I've done the simplest mistake of them all. I switched the polarity of battery compartment
. How tired and careless you have to be to do that. Blah. I wired it up the correct way and connected everything up again. I expected nothing but a proof that my amp is dead. I pluged the speakers in and... and 
a music was playing! Ohhh sweet music! I was in heaven. Thank god I only had half charged batteries in it. If i had a proper power suply it sure would roast it to death. I was so amazed that I had to go online and share it with the world.
Long live Tripath, protector of newbies.
I opened a freezing can of beer and turned the amp down. It's done enough for today...
My intention was not to destroy it, but to improve it. I bought a few caps, resistors, thicker wires, proper speaker ports and started learning how to solder on my new SI amp. Not a smart idea, but I just had to do it. I'm normaly not a DIY guy, but I was thrilled to mod my amp. It played beautifully right from the box (ok, the first day it sounded awful, but afterwards...) and I wanted to improve it even further.
I unscrewed the bolts, twisted the plastic and el cheapo speaker ports, unsoldered many things, done a lot of scratches on pcb, burned many elements on it by my only (oversized) sodering rod and generaly done a lot of nasty things to the poor fella. To make a long story short: two days after I was at my local TV repair shop and one of them was soldering my speaker ports to my T-amp
. Half the caps I bought were too big(I bought film caps) and they could not solder it on. Smaller SMD caps were unavailable in my little town(second biggest town in my country, btw ) so I could only order them from some website and wait for weeks. I was tired of everything and just wanted to go back in time and listen to some unmodded T-amp music. After they were done with it, I took my amp home and soldered(now a lot more skillfully) a battery compartment to the amp so I can finally listen to some music. I checked the wires position with a brief look on t-amp jpeg on my monitor instead looking at the actual pcb labels. That was a big mistake. I turned the amp on and the little LED was also on. I figured everything is ok and I've manged not to destroy the amp. Phew!-But where is the sound? I can't hear anything, I'll turn the volume up 😱 . *PFFFFFFFT*
A tiny but obvious white smoke started lifting up from the chip. Or was it from the big cap I soldered? Or from...? I don't know where from, but I know this is the end of my T-amp. I spent days looking for webshop that delivers to my small country and has T-amps on stock and than waited another 10 days for it. Chip was breaking in for a few days and finally I spent another 4 days on this modding project. It all went away with that white smoke. I wanted to start a fight, get drunk, drive like a maniac and destroy someones faith in the same time. Angry and depressed, rageing in silence.5 minutes after that, i desoldered and soldered a few things on again and saw that I've done the simplest mistake of them all. I switched the polarity of battery compartment
. How tired and careless you have to be to do that. Blah. I wired it up the correct way and connected everything up again. I expected nothing but a proof that my amp is dead. I pluged the speakers in and... and a music was playing! Ohhh sweet music! I was in heaven. Thank god I only had half charged batteries in it. If i had a proper power suply it sure would roast it to death. I was so amazed that I had to go online and share it with the world.Long live Tripath, protector of newbies.
I opened a freezing can of beer and turned the amp down. It's done enough for today...
Nice Story😎
You are indeed lucky. Reverse polarity is one of the few things these chips don't survive.
Learning to solder on this tiny amp? Wow, you are brave... Let us know how it goes. What speakers do you use?
You are indeed lucky. Reverse polarity is one of the few things these chips don't survive.
Learning to solder on this tiny amp? Wow, you are brave... Let us know how it goes. What speakers do you use?
panomaniac said:
This forum gave me *I can do it* feeling and I just went for it. I prepared a story about cheap 30$amp (although it costed me 75$) for myself, in case I destroy it. It was not a very rational thing to do, but at least i was aware of that.
From now on, if a panicking stewardess shouts: "Help! We need someone who can do some sloppy soldering, or the plane is gonna crash!" I can jump in and save the day 😎
Right now, my T-amp has 0.01uF film caps bridging standard speaker ports(which will be replaced with better Cardas ports in a near future) connected to pcb by a thick speaker cables(knitted when I get Cardas). Battery compartment also has thicker wires. C10 330uF cap is replaced by a 1000uF film cap. C3 & C4 caps are still untouched because film caps I got are too big 🙁. TV reapir shop guy told me that he could probably solder it, but even the slightest movement would brake it off. Equivalent SMD caps are unavailable in my town so I'll have to order them from somewhere and wait. When I get some money for a proper pot, I'll do the input mod from your website. The case is still original plastic one, ductaped together
, but the plan is to build a classic metal case after I buy the pot ...and the proper regulated power suply(right now I'm using rechargeable sanyo 2500mah & 1700mah batteries). I'll post a photo of a final amp when it's done. Till then I'll just enjoy the sound and try not to fry anything 😀I have a small Athena bookshelfs: AS-B1-1. They are 8ohm, 91db speakers and can play pretty loud with T-amp. I'm still amazed with price/performance of this combo. When I heard the subtle sound of artist's wet lips when he opened the mouth to sing, I knew this amp was something special. The drummer I heard 2 meters outside my room agreed with the conclusion 😉
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