"No user servicable parts"

Bio's personal thoughts about stuff.

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BioHazard
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"No user servicable parts"

Post by BioHazard »

I was not liking the sound of my subwoofer so I decided to take it apart and see if I could find a crossover control of some kind. Being a "computer" subwoofer (read: crap), it was not meant to be taken apart... ever... There was a sticker on the bottom that read "Do not open", "No user servicable parts inside" and "Don't touch the capacitors or you will die" but I opened it up anyway. I got it into 6 or 7 peices when I decided there was nothing inside to play with so I put it back together.

Lesson 1: Sound equipment is sensitive.

When I got it put back together and plugged in, it made a very unpleasant noise and began to smell like fish. I'm not sure what happened to it (I happenend to it), but it no longer functions properly. I put it in the back room with all the other stuff I have taken apart and/or smells like fish and now I'm subwooferless.

I looked around on the internet and found the subwoofer that goes with my speakers (Infinity HTS-20) and grabbed one off ebay. Hopefully this 10" sub will be better than my 4" sub. This one is a home theater model instead of a crap "computer" thing. It should be here in 3 days or so. My sound rig isin't worth listening to without anything below 150Hz, except maybe chiptunes...
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Hobbs
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Post by Hobbs »

heh fish. Let that be a lesson to you (the fish of course).
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BioHazard
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Joined: Mon Jul 25, 2005 10:02
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Post by BioHazard »

I thought I might follow up on this and I'm glad to report that my sound rig is awesome now. The greater range of sound is quite impressive on some tracks. Getting to this point was not the smoothest thing ever though...

First of all; It arrived. Great. I opened the box. It's all banged up. Since the box was 75% bubble wrap, I decided that the damage was not caused by shipping. Definately not "brand new" as stated in the auction. Oh well, it's going under my desk anyway...

So I hooked it up. Nothing happened, then I realized I had to set my stereo to 4-channel. Then it turned on and immediately proceeded to make my innards explode. I turned it down quickly as to not liquefy everything in the room. It has plenty of power. More power than I'll ever even come close to wanting.

Later that day, I was listening to a really great track when all of a sudden the subwoofer started um, farting... I knew this wasn't good. After cracking a few jokes, I looked at the back of the unit and noticed that the "something bad happened" light was on. I fiddled with stuff untill it turned off. As soon as I got everything back together, it began to fart again. Lovely. I took it apart and lo' and behold... Nothing was visibly wrong with it... I got onto Infinity's website and got hold of the service manual and did everything it said but to no avail.

I took it to the local shop and they decided it was going to cost $200 and a goat to fix it so I had to live with it being broken. I brought it home and plugged it back in. Then I got the fish smell and magic blue smoke. This is what I was waiting for. It was official, services would be held that evening.

Being the take-apart-and-break-stuff guy that I usually am, I took it apart again and fed the wires to the driver out the port-hole and wired it up to my amp. It works great if I only hook up one channel. I'm not sure how to fix it, but after a lot of math and crumpling peices of paper, I decided there wasn't enough impedance on the line to handle both channels.

I now embarked on a quest to find a 12-ohm 90-watt resistor. Not an easy thing to find at radio-shack, so I looked it up online... Wow! Those things are HUGE! It's like sticking a hot-dog in the wires (I was temped to try a hot-dog, but I was afraid it would interfere with the fish smell.). I'm still looking for the resistor. I'm pretty sure where to get it, but I don't have the time right now. I'll get to it later.


Anyway, that's the story...
So now I have all the bass I and my neighbors will never need, but only on the left channel.
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