Dead Amp

I got a little carried away the other night when taking some photos and continuously added more and more coloured cornflour and water until the speaker was overflowing.  The cornflower flowed all the way into the speaker box and onto the electronics of the amplifier causing it to stop working.

So I decided to fix it!







The first challenge was to get into the box, easier said then done in the end because the box was glued and stapled together very solidly and I didn't have a saw hand to just chop it in half and reveal its contains.  I ended up being able to leaver the main electrical board of the amp out which had all the external plugs and dials attached too as well.  The only thing left in the box now was the power supply which located in the bottom far corner of the box and impossible to reach.  There were two screws on the bottom of the box holding the power supply (voltage converter thing) in.  I couldn't simply unscrew those because they went through to a washer and nut which just spun on them selves and wouldn't come undone.  I couldn't manage to hold them still with anything either so I grabbed the drill out and drilled through the screw until they popped right out.

Next challenge was to get the power converter out of the tiny gap in the box.  The gap was too small so I drilled and cut a way at the sides until it would slide out.

















Unscrewing all the screws whilst holding the bolts with a pair of pliers got me through the cage of the board and I was able to finally see the mess.

The board was covered in a non-conductive glue that was sticking everything together and hindering me from scratching away at the corn flour so I first peeled all the glue away.










There were quite a few patches that looked like this that had a thin dried layer of corn flour.

I scratched away as much corn flour as I could.

Testing the speaker revealed that it now worked intermittently!













I got the electrical tape out and covered all the wires and areas that could electrocute me, then got a box and put the amp and power converter in there.

It looked pretty good!

When I had it all finally hooked up I found that it was even less consistant with when it would work then before.  Slightly annoying, but still usable.

After using it for a while it completely stopped playing anything I sent through too it and instead whenever turned on would go completely ballistic!  It would do its max amplitude and a rat of around 20hz!  This actually worked out great.  Instead of generating tones I just turn it on and it goes crazy at true 100% amplitude and approximately 20hz which makes some huge sculptures.