@obarrett - I'd have the AMP checked out, inside and out before you do anything. I looked at a picture of the Outlaw RR2160 receiver, and the IEC plug on the back does not have a ground prong. If that is correct on yours, then 3 pronged power cord isn't going to do anything. Something maybe wrong on the inside of the Outlaw. Loose wire, someone may have made a modification (to add a ground prong???), who knows what. It is even possible that the amp's chassis is now hot (power wise). The fact that you got a spark when connecting the TT/Cartridge's ground wire to the ground on the Outlaw is saying there is some significant voltage on the chassis.
Did I just cook my preamp?
I have a Simaudio Moon 110LP phone preamp amplifying a Dynavector 20X2L cartridge on a VPI Classic. It feeds in to an Outlaw Audio RR2160 amp which drives Magnepan LRS speakers.
I recently moved and two months in I realized my speaker placement wasn’t quite right, so today I reorganized my listening room. This involved unplugging some power cables but I kept most of the interconnects in place. I did have to disconnect the phone stage from the amplifier.
After getting things back into place, I listened to some music using coaxial input before reconnecting the interconnects of the phono stage. When I tried to, I actually got some electric current that burned my hand slightly. This came from the back of the amplifier. I made sure everything was unplugged and tried again - this time a spark and smoke from the interconnect making contact to the back of the amplifier.
I’m so confused why this would happen, but eventually I did get everything connected. Now the output from the phono stage is just a bump every 1 second. It doesn’t amplify the signal from the TT.
My amplifier has a built in phono stage and using this I was able to verify that the turntable is still producing a signal. The built in phono stage sounds terrible, however, as thin and flat as paper. It is music, however.
When I connect the phono stage to the power, the blue light on the front illuminates for a moment and then goes dark.
Incredibly, when I was unplugging the phono preamp, I actually got some current from simply touching the exterior of the box. Something is seriously wrong and dangerous with my setup, and this box was grounded to the turntable with a ground cable, which was connected to the outlet with a three prong cable with ground.
Has anyone experienced anything like this before? I will email Simaudio and see if they’ll repair it. I’m also taking recommendations for replacements. I liked the 110LP and maybe will just replace with the 110LPV2.
Showing 3 responses by jeffbij
@obarrett You said:
Do you mean that you connected the interconnect cables running FROM the turntable and plugged them into the INPUT connections on the Moon 110LP, and the ground cable from the turntable to the ground stud on the Moon 110LP as well? And then plugged interconnects from the OUTPUT connections on the Moon 110LP to one of the AUDIO IN connections on the Outlaw receiver, correct? ... just trying to get it straight in my head... - Jeff
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@obarrett - Thanks for clarifying on the connections. I'd take @jea48 up on his offer to work with you directly. And a nice video on showing how everything is hooked up and what happened. A picture is worth a 1000 words. One suggestion that I would make, and please don't take it the wrong way.... You need to cleanup your wiring. I'd also replace those plug-in 2to6 outlet adapters with at least a specifically designed AV power strip or even an old Monster Power HTS series unit from eBay if there is a budget constraint. Those 2to6 adapters always scare me because they typically not well made and can be overloaded and shorted way to easily. Also, check the wiring/cabling itself. I see in the video that you have some stuff coiled up on the floor, etc. And just to rule it out, make sure you don't have something like a cut in a power cable that has shorted to the interconnects or to one of the chassis. Hope you can figure out what happened and that nothing got permanently fried. - Jeff
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