A Fender and some lead-free problems ?

"Arfa Daily"

** Fender has its main manufacturing facility in Mexico. Staff from the US normally supervise the work - but being sent to Mexico for a stint of supervision work is considered tantamount to torture. ** Not been true for a very long time - since CBS sold the business to a group of former managers and production went south of the border. ** You say the solder was lead free and this is the norm now with Fender products.

IME - the flux that comes with lead free solder wire is of the " no-clean" type or else is water soluble to allow PCB cleaning in a detergent bath instead of nasty, expensive hydrocarbons.

It's crap at soldering anything that is not *perfectly* tarnish free.

I always use Multicore Savbit and have found nothing else works quite as well for repair work - the flux is excellent for mildly tarnished surfaces and the solder doe not dissolve fine copper wires like others do.

... Phil

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Did all the rest of the solder joints in the amp look ok?

** PCBs are soldered in an automated process - not by hand like chassis mount valve sockets have to be.

I'm sure AD looked at all the hand soldering and went over again, if need be.

... Phil

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Is ther a ul.com E number on the pcb overlay? eg E254931 on a 2010 made Fender Frontman with pbfitis then in ul.com searchbox showed it was China so presumably populated and soldered in China . This also showed the board type was not costlier higher temp type for PbF so similarly suggestive of lack of Fender QC. No mention of PbF or RoHS on that amp But would hand wiring to valve sockets be done over there or in the USA?

En el artículo , N_Cook escribió:

Labour intensive, so they would be looking for the cheapest labour available, i.e. China.

--
(\__/)   
(='.'=) 
(")_(")

The ones on the PCBs looked 'fair' - as much as lead-free joints ever look ok on anyone's equipment these days ...

Arfa

Yes, I went over any hand done joints on the bases, that looked anything less than sound both mechanically and electrically. By far, the worst ones were the filament feeds, because, I guess, they were thicker, and there was two of them at each pin, where the run came in to each base, and departed again for the next base along.

Arfa

Can't say. There is a music festival going on in the village all weekend, with many performers in many venues. The owner of this amp is one of them - hence the urgency to the job. It was in, on the bench, fixed, and on its way back inside 2 hours, so not still in my possession to check for UL numbers.

Arfa

I've seen numerous examples in my own purchases (since I don't do regular repair work anymore), where hand soldering has failed just from opening the cases.

I always open any line voltage operated consumer/imported/China-made gear to examine all of the hand assembly work.

What appears to be standard procedure is that the leads for attachment have been tinned previously, so the assembler only needs to hold the iron on the connection long enough to get the slightest amount of reflow to take place, before moving on to the next connection.

The result in many cases is a temporary connection.. the way a welder would tack-weld a part in place to hold it temporarily before doing the finish weld which actually secures the part.

Good mechanical connections are essentially a thing of the past, rarely ever performed in low-end equipment anymore.. at most (generally) a lead might be poked thru a terminal hole before adding solder, but the leads of the vacuum tube era were nearly always formed tightly around the terminal before soldering.

Tacking pre-tinned leads to existing soldered connections is the present standard of quality that's accepted, even by the marketers (rarely the actual manufacturers) of better quality equipment.

I believe QA is a figment of the imagination any more, as far as consumer gear goes.. I would expect that the highest priority is placed on the external appearance of the finished product, and nothing else.

See.. store return policy.

A new consumer market acronym for the old use of MSRP.. Marketer's store return policy.

-- Cheers, WB .............

In general, I would agree, but for the most part, tubed guitar amps, particularly from the 'big' names, are expensive specialist items, and subject to limited production runs of hundreds at a time, rather than the hundreds of thousands of cheap Chinese DVD players, or whatever. It is quite normal for these amplifiers to have signed production progress stickers on the chassis, and a final QA test sticker. Sometimes, even a 'musicality' sticker, so I think that for the most part, QA in some form at least, still exists for the majority of manufacturers of these products. Apart from this, many examples have adjustable bias for the output tubes, so as a final or almost final operation, a real person has to have their hands and eyes inside the chassis to carry out this task.

As to the wires on this one, most were wrapped around the pins in at least a token fashion, prior to being soldered. The filament wires were of a rather thicker gauge which certainly *could* have been wrapped around the pins, but wasn't, presumably because of the extra time that it would have taken to do it neatly and properly. Or perhaps it was just an example of a lazy or poorly trained production worker ? There was not really a *lack* of solder on the joints, just that they were poor, with the solder having not stuck 'well' to either the wires or the tags on the bases. I would have to say that it looked to me just typical of a joint - of any variety of solder - that had been made with an iron that was either too cold, or not up to the job in terms of tip thermal inertia. Or again, maybe just a worker that was poorly trained in the art of soldering. Either way, poor workmanship like this, really should have been picked up somewhere in the build process ...

Arfa

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The QC and safety issues with that 2010 Fender Frontman were mains Tx hanging on ,just, by 1 of the 4 bolts, the others the nuts had dropped off, the fourth was loose.

Lack of fettling? of the swarfy surrounds of drilled holes in an Aluminium block that was intermediary between power devices and the heatsink, taking the mounting bolts. Although white goo present it was not compressed due to the interference of this swarf so heat only passing via the mounting bolts.

The absolute most horrible quality construction and solder job on an amp I've seen was a Trace Elliot Velocette. It took me two painstaking hours to re-route circuits by hand wiring. And this was a small 20 watt combo with an 8" speaker.

--
Live Fast Die Young, Leave A Pretty Corpse

Interestingly, I would have said that the Trace Idiots I've seen here for the most part, fall in the 'better built' category ... But then I would have said that about Fenders as well before seeing the dreadful job that had been done on this one !

Arfa

"Arfa Daily"

** So you have not seen the 4 x EL84 ( Trace Elliot- Gibson) models where the valve sockets shrink due heat ?

The EL84s' pins become severely toed-in and installing new valves is near impossible - removing the old sockets and fitting 4 new ceramic ones is about a 3 hour job.

Then you have to wash all the white flux reside off the PCB too, or the amp will crackle and fart.

.... Phil

Can't honestly say that one of those has crossed my bench that I can remember, but I'll know what to look for now ... !

Arfa