A worse feeling than burning out your amp?


Last night I was planning to get back into making digital music and began setting up my laptop with the necessary software. I had my audio cable (1/8" connector) plugged into my Macintosh, which was playing mp3s. The laptop was ready to go, so I unplugged the cable from the Mac without turning the amp off, which I've done dozens and dozens of times before; BIG mistake. I heard a very loud buzzing sound that lasted about a quarter of a second, followed by a loud pop. I went over to the amp and could smell electronics burning. I turned the amp off and back on, after which I noticed that sound was only coming out of the left channel and it was very broken and full of static. Also, it doesn't matter which input is selected, it plays all sound coming from all inputs now. This integrated NAD C 340 amp is no longer good as a preamp either. What a horrible feeling, but it could have been much worse (my speakers could have blown out!).

Has anyone ever done something similar to their amp and attempted to fix it? I'm at least going to open it up and have a look before I trash the thing. The only bad part about all of this is having to wait several months before I can afford to replace this unit. For now, it's back to the old mass market Kenwood receiver....
jwglista

Showing 1 response by bigkidz

Yes, twice I was fooling around with speaker cables and used some cheap banana plugs on the speaker end. Playing music loud must have loosened the bananas and they crossed blowing a channel in an amp. I did it again about a month late to another amp. Cost about $100 per amp to fix all for not spending a few extra seconds to make sure the bananas were in there tightly.

Happy Listeing.