final report on the JVC XP-A1000 (with useful news about IC protectors)

As Gabriel Heatter * was wont to say... "There's good news tonight!" Or more precisely, 10AM PST.

I started by replacing the four electrolytic PS caps that had leaked. (The unit still worked, though I don't know why. I'll take them into work Monday and see exactly what sort of condition they're in.) Oddly, the new Nichicon caps have a brown sleeve that exactly matches the color of the leak. Which I couldn't clean up, because neither water nor isopropyl alcohol would dissolve it.

With great trepidation and hands trembling **, I soldered in a Littelfuse

1.5A picofuse to replace the blown IC protector (ICP-N38).

Bingo! She works.

Although the PS caps _had_ to be replaced, they were not the problem. As replacing the ICP was the only thing needed to fix the problem, it follows that an ICP _can_ be intermittent (until my messing around two weeks ago blew it).

Something similar occurred 25 years ago, when RF got into my Lux power amp and blew the triple-diffused RF output transistors. They were blown _just enough_ to pull sufficient current from the power line to grossly overheat the unit (it took over an hour for the power transformer to cool down!), but not enough to blow the line fuses!

There's great pleasure in fixing something valuable, a product the manufacturer wanted $65 (plus shipping to) just to look at. *** And I wouldn't have been able to do it if I hadn't bought the service manual 20 years ago.

I also have an XP-A1010 (the same model with a titanium rather than black finish), which was available to replace the XP-A1000 when it konked out. I bought enough spare parts to service the XP-A1010 -- including a lithium-cell holder -- but whether I dig into it in the near future is an unknown. Perhaps I'll just lift the lid and look for leaky things.

Thanks, as always, for the (mostly) useful advice and support from this group.

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** Not to be confused with Hans Trembling, the famous German something-or-another.

*** I should be grateful that JVC still has the XP-A1000 on their "repairable" list.
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William Sommerwerck
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