$400 seems a lot for a sponge:
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2016/02/the-inside-of-this-us700-battery-is-mostly-a-sponge/
pro quality doesn't seem to mean much these days.. about $20 worth of cheap
chinese LiIon batteries and a pretty naff looking circuit in a $700 battery
from a Big Name company. but I guess hey, if you've spent 10k on their
'Pro' product ..
Always amazes me just how shoddy some of the supposed top end gear is when
you pull it apart.
this comes relatively soon after I repaired the power supply of a horribly
expensive amp for someone who'd been told the power supply had blown and
they should just buy a new one - I was looking it over, voltages were all
correct, no obvious faults.. it just wouldn't turn on - then I saw a cmos
4000 series chip in the power supply.. now switch mode power supplies
have been around for a good while, why the heck a 1970's IC should be in a
modern amp left me a bit bewildered. Then I realized it was being used to
generate a sort of clock signal. This is akin to having an oral surgeon
perform a tooth extraction by blindfolding himself and wildly hitting you in
the face with a stick! The end result was a component - one of the most
reliable of all components, a styrene 'greencap' - something that never
fails.. failing. a part that cost 20c I should add.
No wonder most techs couldn't find the problem - it's all but inconceivable
for one of those things to die. Unless you design a completely idiotic
circuit. Something I would not expect in a 4000 dollar amplifier.
k
<grumpy with tech today>
