Blackstar ID30 TVP repair

Blackstar ID-30 TVP repair

This is the first Blackstar ID30 TVP repair that I’ve come across, but there wasn’t much to the job. The owner had lent  his amp to a friend and the tip of the jack socket had fallen off inside the amp.

I was really impressed with the build quality on this amp and it was very easy to work on. It was a very quick job to remove the separate input jack PCB, desolder the socket, remove the offending jack tip, resolder the socket, refit the board and reassemble the unit. This all fell within my minimum diagnostic charge.

I was very impressed by the transparency of the inbuilt noise suppressor on the Blackstar ID:30 TVP OD2 channel. This thing has an insane amount of gain and is totally silent, but sustain isn’t really affected. I guess that they sense the input right at the front end of the amp, but do the suppression just before the power amp. Like a 4 cable ISP Decimator, but free! Great stuff.

I’d have liked to have taken a look at the TVP on an oscilloscope, to see what the guys are doing here but I didn’t get the chance. My completely unjustified guess is that it’s changing the power amp output impedance along similar lines to the patent that Bruce Keir filed when he was with Marshall. But that’s just a guess.

If you need a Blackstar ID30 TVP repair, please get in touch.

Smoke machine repair

smoke machine repair

A smoke machine repair, brought to my Newark workshop by a Grantham based DJ.

This is a fairly simple unit: A power supply, a thermostat and a relay to control the power to the smoke heater. There is also an external remote on a 6.5mm 3 pole jack cable.

The customer was finding that the relay sometimes did not switch on the heater. The problem was intermittent, meaning that it would sometimes happen, but sometimes it would not! Despite filling my workshop with smoke on many occasions, I couldnt replicate the fault.

Upon investigation, I discovered that the jack socket had a slightly loose sleeve connection so I replaced the socket with another. After a bit more smoking the problem still didn’t manifest itself, so I returned the unit to the customer.

If you have a smoke machine repair for me, please get in touch.