jimmymcfarrell
Anyone fancy a pint?
The Pioneer A400 amplifier owned and used daily (until now) by a mate of mine has just thrown in the towel. I am wondering if anyone can suggest where the fault may lie, and what the feasability of repairing this amplifier for sensible money may be - bearing in mind that my mate is not particularly interested in hifi; his system consists of the A400 and a pair of IMF ALS-40s (these are the big-bookshelf IMFs, not the full size transmission line ones, instead, they a drive unit at the end of the line to increase frequency response and provide something approaching transmission line standards of freq. response in a much more sensible sized cabinet). Both amp and speakers were purchases made by me on his behalf, as a means of getting him something that sounded half decent for sensible money - the A400 cost £30 with a broken volume control - it was a dual channel vol. control originally to allow balance adjustment - we replaced this with a decent "normal" pot and the amp then worked faultlessly; the only problem being the knob no longer fitted so was left off and has since been lost. The IMFs were less that £100 IIRC and also work faultlessly and sound bloody good. The cabinets are a bit rough, and as I said the vol. knob is long gone from the A400, but for around £100 for amp and speakers, this system sounds fantastic - what I am getting at here, is it's not anything that its owner is particularly fond of, merely the best possible value system (by a huge margin), that has served its purpose really well for someone who only cares that it sounds good, not what it looks like, or what its "kit-rack presence" equates to!! So any repairs needed to the amp are simply to get it working again, it doesnt matter if it needs to be "butchered" somewhat, although I accept it is worth him spending a few quid on it, as it will be hard to find something as good for not much outlay (short of finding another A400 with a simple to fix fault like this one had, for £30). Anyway, I digress (rather a lot actually, apologies, I've clearly got a bit carried away!!)
Basically the A400 is dead, completely, nothing at all, LED doesnt illuminate, no noise, no hiss, nothing through headphones or speakers, or anything, zilch! Having questioned my mate about what went wrong with it, he admitted that he lost one channel a while back (but decided not to tell me) and just ran both left and right speaker off the one working channel - and now (serves him right I hear you say), it's gone completely. Are these amps known for any specific faults, the fact that there is no life in it at all, well, no LED lighting up anyway, makes me suspect the transformer, but I'm sure someone will know far more than I do... Any suggestions (as usual) will be greatly appreciated. Tah very much
Basically the A400 is dead, completely, nothing at all, LED doesnt illuminate, no noise, no hiss, nothing through headphones or speakers, or anything, zilch! Having questioned my mate about what went wrong with it, he admitted that he lost one channel a while back (but decided not to tell me) and just ran both left and right speaker off the one working channel - and now (serves him right I hear you say), it's gone completely. Are these amps known for any specific faults, the fact that there is no life in it at all, well, no LED lighting up anyway, makes me suspect the transformer, but I'm sure someone will know far more than I do... Any suggestions (as usual) will be greatly appreciated. Tah very much
