Rega Ear Dying?

[Shayla]

I got bored the other day, and took my rega ear's cover off. There are no warrantee stickers or anything, so it's cool. The thing smelled like sulfur, I think? A couple of transisters are pink on parts of the outside, almost a salmon color. Not all of two of them is pink, and there was a little piece of plastic that was lying underneat them. Are they blown?

It still sounds good, but I wanted to upgrade it. I trust that smell isn't normal. Any ideas? Links to pictures below. The forums wouldn't let me resize them, and I felt the high resolution might be necessary to help diagnose it. Enjoy.

Picture 1
Picture 2
Picture 3
Picture 4
Picture 5
Picture 6
Picture 7
Picture 8

 

[Shayla]

If anybody's interested, the main amplifier inside seems to be a TI ne5532ap.

 

[eitook]

LOL......
PICTURES.....please

 

[Shayla]

Will do. Perhaps some of ya'll can help me work some mods into it. I Love the sound... I just think that there's more there. Learning as I go here... sorry. I think the 'transisters' are power regulators, which would make a little more sense, I think.

 

[Shayla]

Would a capacitor going bad smell like sulphur?

 

[ToddW]

yep i have smelt plenty of burnt caps and they definately smell like sulfer.

 

[Shayla]

Pictures coming later tonight or tomorrow, if anybody cares

It still works, but I can hear clicking, and there's static coming from a ground somewhere, If I touch the outside of both of the interconnects, it goes away. Not sure wth that means, but some caps need changed, and I'm still not exactly sure which is frying. Maybe someone can tell by the pictures later, they're all going to be really high res, as long as the manual focus cooporates with me.

 

[PinkFloyd]

Yup, we need pictures

 

[Shayla]

Bumpy so you can see the pictures

Sorry for being a bit annoying.

 

[dano1122]

#1 learn to take pictures in focus
#2 learn to resize pictures to 800 or 1024 res.
#3 retake pictures

 

[Shayla]

Quote:

Originally Posted by dano1122 #1 learn to take pictures in focus #2 learn to resize pictures to 800 or 1024 res. #3 retake pictures

#1 The only camera I had access to is quite difficult to focus well. I had to manually focus it because the autofocus doesn't do close up shots at all.

#2 When resized, I was unable to read some part numbers, so I left them at their resolution, and compressed them with the highest compression I could and leave them legible, resulting in sane file sizes, and quite legible pictures.

#3 If I have time, I'll retake some, but it was quite frustrating with the camera. My vision is quite poor (I'm blind in one eye, and the other doesn't work all that well), and the only way to judge your focus on it was a little magnified box on the display that didn't help much because the display itself has a rather low resolution. I have a mouse gestures plugin for firefox that lets me half and double image sizes with a simple gesture. Since I don't think I can use html img tags, it's the best I can do for now. Perhaps I'll have time to tweak them Sunday.

After double checking, I think it's rather obvious what I've done? I selected different groups of parts for each picture, and focused as well as I could on them, and then for an overall picture, I wasn't too worried about it, as almost all of the parts are illustrated in previous photos. I've removed the IMG VB code, and just provided links to each individual picture. Your browser should make them pretty, and let you zoom if you feel the need.

 

[tyre]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ryuichi A couple of transisters are pink on parts of the outside, almost a salmon color. Not all of two of them is pink, and there was a little piece of plastic that was lying underneat them. Are they blown?

I don't think they're blown if the amp still works. I don't know if they need to be replaced though. It looks like the transistors have been getting hot to the point of the coating peeling off. Maybe they should be heatsinked. If there's enough clearance around the transistors, any TO-126 style heatsink would probably work.

I did a datasheetarchive.com search and those transistors are made by Sanyo. I couldn't find any distributor that sells them though. You might wanna ask these questions in the DIY-Forum so that someone who might be familiar with discrete components can suggest similar transistors to replace those with or if they even need to be replaced at all.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ryuichi Perhaps some of ya'll can help me work some mods into it. I Love the sound... I just think that there's more there. Learning as I go here... sorry. I think the 'transisters' are power regulators, which would make a little more sense, I think.

I think that the transistors are part of a discrete output stage following the NE5532 opamp. The voltage regulator is the LM317 with the heatsink on it.

Just about all the components could potentially be replaced if you were interested in modding it. The NE5532 could be replaced with an OPA2227 for example. The generic capacitors could be replaced with low impedance ones like the Panasonic FM series or Nichicon UPW's. Some of those box style film capacitors could probably be replaced also.

 

[Shayla]

Quote:

Originally Posted by tyre I don't think they're blown if the amp still works. I don't know if they need to be replaced though. It looks like the transistors have been getting hot to the point of the coating peeling off. Maybe they should be heatsinked. If there's enough clearance around the transistors, any TO-126 style heatsink would probably work. I did a datasheetarchive.com search and those transistors are made by Sanyo. I couldn't find any distributor that sells them though. You might wanna ask these questions in the DIY-Forum so that someone who might be familiar with discrete components can suggest similar transistors to replace those with or if they even need to be replaced at all. I think that the transistors are part of a discrete output stage following the NE5532 opamp. The voltage regulator is the LM317 with the heatsink on it. Just about all the components could potentially be replaced if you were interested in modding it. The NE5532 could be replaced with an OPA2227 for example. The generic capacitors could be replaced with low impedance ones like the Panasonic FM series or Nichicon UPW's. Some of those box style film capacitors could probably be replaced also.

Any idea if transisters getting hot would smell like sulphur? If it's probably the capacitors, I'll go buy a new soldering iron Monday, make a trip to the local electronics shop, and go to town. There's also the clicking, but if the transisters are getting that hot, I'd expect that could cause some noise. Thanks for the quick useful reply

 

[tyre]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ryuichi Any idea if transisters getting hot would smell like sulphur? If it's probably the capacitors, I'll go buy a new soldering iron Monday, make a trip to the local electronics shop, and go to town. There's also the clicking, but if the transisters are getting that hot, I'd expect that could cause some noise. Thanks for the quick useful reply

I'm not sure what transistors smell like when they're hot. Ask in the DIY forum, there's plenty of knowledgeable people there. Are they too hot to touch after you play music?

But if you are going to replace parts, you might as well just order them from a distributor like Digikey or Mouser. You can get better quality parts for less than you would pay for whatever stuff they have at Radio Shack. They also have better soldering irons.

 

[Shayla]

You know, I hadn't even thought to hook it up without the chassis to check. I'll see what's getting hot later, and perhaps see where the smell is coming from.