This is the oddest thing. I picked up a pair of minty 2nd-hand JM Lab Daline 3s and A REL Brittania B3, which I paired with a dormant SN3/HCDR fronted by a Hugo/2Go for outdoor music on the back patio. I got it dialed in and was delighting in it for the last few days. Good times.
Tonight, I walk over to turn it up and a spark comes out of my finger on to the chasis and pop. One Daline gets fried, so I investigate the channel loss. Headphone out is fine so It must be the output stage. I power down and swap speaker leads and power up. I get a short loud hum and the other Daline is toast. The REL is fried too. Total carnage from my own static charge.
Thought I would trauma bond here. All grounding was proper, so wow, didnāt think static body charge was that big a threat. Geez, WTF. Thatās a fair amount of cabbage up in smoke.
It seems very odd. It is usually only digital electronics or low level semiconductors that are at risk from the sort of static discharge youād get through movement. Was the thing powered up and was there a very loud thump or other noise from the speakers, suggesting it amplified the electrical pulse and overloaded everything? If not I struggle to see how the damage to everything happened.
I seriously doubt that static body charge could cause this sort of carnage. Iāve certainly never read anything remotely like it. This is pure guesswork and speculation really but from your description you are assuming a static discharge from yourself to the equipment. But more likely it seems to me that the spark you saw was in fact due to a high potential on the equipment casework discharging to earth through you. In other words an earthing fault somewhere in the system. You say it is on the patio. Perhaps damp/water ingress has caused it.
I just used an outlet tester on the GFI outlets I was using and they are both legit. I will ponder this mystery as I grieve the loss of those JMlabs, such a waste. Thanks all for the brainstorming.
Clearly the left channel of the SN3 is dumping current, which canāt be an inexpensive repair. Iām sooo bummed, but when one door closes another opens, I hope.
If one channel of your amp has āgone DCā so to speak, itās not a hugely expensive to repair. Likely much cheaper than replacing the fried speaker driver if thatās whatās required. Sadly itās a bit late for me point out that if one channel cuts out, your diagnostic checks should never include swapping speaker cables to test the other channel!
@EricR, You havenāt yet responded on whether there was a loud thump or similar from the speakers, but anyway, a basic question: Assuming you donāt mean they caught fire or had dmoke coming out of them, what do you mean the speakers are fried/toast? How do you know they donāt work?
When I take my non-cotton T-shirt off at night in the dark outside my bedroom, so as not to wake my wife up, often Blue static electrical charges are visible as I release the garment onto the floor.
A couple of weeks ago when I switched on my lava lamp in my listening room, it blew the bulb, and this is about for the fourth time, when the static charge from my finger seemed to go up into the lamp and blow the bulb.
Okay, thank you for that data point. So here it is, whether lava lamps or supernaits, thatās all it takes. Be mindful of the charge you are carrying.
Many years ago, at my work, we did a health test on an electrical test bike .
One female employee fried 2 of these bikes , one after the other. After that, they took her off the test
The rest of us, about 200 people, did not damage any bikeā¦
