View Single Post
Old 4th Mar 2021, 10:59 am   #2173
Craig Sawyers
Dekatron
 
Craig Sawyers's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: Oxford, UK.
Posts: 4,941
Default Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.

I've just been peering at the internal photograph of the insane d'Agostino Relentless. And I can find no evidence of fuses anywhere. Either on the rear panel, or internally to protect the power lines. I can see no protection features.

Given the size of the reservoir capacitors, and the 128 power devices, if anything breaks loose there is likely to be an internal fire, and something horrible will happen to the speakers.

At one stage I had one of d'Agostino's earlier monsters from the mid 80's - the Krell KSA100, that would chuck out 100W into 8 ohms in class A. Rather a lightweight at only 50kg. Entirely dual mono in one chassis, including two mains transformers.

At least it has a rear panel fuse, and a front rocker switch that incorporated a 10A breaker. And there was speaker protection via a simple circuit and a massive Omron relay. But no fuses between the reservoir caps and the circuit.

It blew up twice. First time it was just the output devices on one channel. The next time all hell broke loose, including two resistors burning clear through the board with clouds of smoke. Each time on turn-on. If I was a betting man I'd say that once it was powered up it was fine - but during power up the thing broke into oscillation for maybe a second with randomly predictable consequences.

But I shudder to think what will happen if something similar happens with the Relentless.

Craig
Craig Sawyers is offline   Reply With Quote