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.

obarrett

Showing 3 responses by mark200mph

At some point i was going to buy an outlaw amp but I read a thread that a few people said it caught on fire I would not plug that back in .I don't rember it being an audiogon thread.this could be destructive to all your equipment.be careful.

In looking at the forums alot of the outlaw amps had a ground loop hum and people were going from 3 to 2 prong bypassing the ground.as stated above this is frowned on.hope you get this fixed.there are alot of smart people on here some are electric engineers.  Good luck and make sure you have an observer that can throw the breaker off or some surge protector that can trip.when we built our hospital the young apprentice electrician got fried on the roof .we could not save him be careful.