rrcrain
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I have an issue with two 10 drivers out of an AR90. The obvious problem is a voice coil lead became disconnected from one terminal on both drivers (same speaker). It can be reconnected, but it is a bit short.
The potentially severe issue is the DC resistance. They never measure over 3.5 ohm. After manually moving the cone, I've seen it drop to zero, OK, .5 ohm to be precise. The voice coil is not rubbing. I checked for a short to the frame and that checked fine.
What the heck is going on and what are my options?
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Well, it's been a while, but one of my two amps died. My first thought, because I saw something glow red how in the case when I turned the unit on, was the unit suffered a cascade failure. AKA not cost effective to repair.
Fall is here, my depression over the event has abated a bit and I decided to open the unit to see how bad the damage was before trashing. No burn marks, no scorched wires or melted or loose connections to be found. Checking further, both 5 amp fuses were blown in the right channel, the channel that failed.
I decided to check the TO-3 transistors first, and found two that are a dead short between B-C-E. Each was part of a pair, it's matched transistor was good, er, acceptable given it's age.Checking further, I noticed whatever repair facility replaced 2 of the 4 NPN transistors in the channel, and used the wrong part number.
The original part numbers are now obsolete (MJ15024 and MJ15025) but two substitutions are available. The better choices for the TO-3 NPN and PNP transistors is MJ21193G and MJ21196G. Mouses strongly recommended replacing all eight if going with these options. They have a slightly higher gain than the originals, supposedly better linearity and a high SOA.
If this fixes the amp, this plus the new electrolytic caps should be a minor upgrade in performance and perhaps extend this old Heathkit AA-1800's life a few more decades.