{"id":5296,"date":"2022-11-27T15:21:32","date_gmt":"2022-11-27T14:21:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/?p=5296"},"modified":"2022-11-27T15:21:33","modified_gmt":"2022-11-27T14:21:33","slug":"electronics-repair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/2022\/11\/27\/electronics-repair\/","title":{"rendered":"Electronics repair"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In the autumn of 2019 when I was assembling a set of (second-hand) speakers to fill out a 5.1 configuration for our living room, I bought a highly customized<\/em> 20-year-old Wharfedale Topaz SW-10 subwoofer<\/a> for \u20ac50. The dude I bought it from was an electronics tinkerer, and he’d ripped out the guts of the original speaker and built a custom cabinet around it. Going by old photos on the internet, the vanilla Topaz SW-10 was a chonk already; but the custom case was a beast.<\/em> It also fit really nicely next to our TV cabinet, and was sturdy enough to rest our massive lamp on. Or a small elephant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It had always had a bit of a persistent low hum while idling. A couple of weeks ago when we put the furniture back after the kitchen building works I rearranged all the wiring behind the cabinet. When I plugged the subwoofer back in it made angry buzzing noises and then shut up altogether. Boo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My analogue electronics knowledge is…limited. I took the back panel off, couldn’t see anything obviously wrong or burned out, and put it back together again. I connected it with different power and signal cables. I didn’t have a different amp that I could plug it into to see if the problem lay with the SW output of my amp, but the amp was fine in all other respects, so I thought that was unlikely to be at fault. Abi and I took a tour of some of the second-hand shops in the area, and I found a compatible (but much smaller and less powerful) Sony subwoofer for \u20ac12.50. I plugged it in back home, and it worked just fine. So the problem was with the SW-10.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the hope of being able to revive it, I brought the subwoofer to Akkerman Electronics<\/a> in Wormerveer. Ron Akkerman examined it and said he could<\/em> fix it, but it would be expensive: more than I’d paid for it in the first place. Also, because the thing had seen so much tinkering, he wouldn’t be able to offer a guarantee to go with the repair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I’m on the lookout for another second-hand subwoofer now. But I wanted to post this as a reminder to myself, and as a recommendation to others that Akkerman Electronics<\/a> exists<\/strong> and is good<\/strong>. Good-quality analogue audio equipment like amplifiers and speakers lasts for decades<\/em> if you treat them right, and they’re often very repairable. I like buying new gear (just bought a Sonos Oe SL for the kitchen), but I also like getting a bargain. I’m content to roll with the (wimpy) \u20ac12.50 Sony subwoofer until a nice second-hand deal comes around.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the autumn of 2019 when I was assembling a set of (second-hand) speakers to fill out a 5.1 configuration for our living room, I bought a highly customized 20-year-old Wharfedale Topaz SW-10 subwoofer for \u20ac50. The dude I bought it from was an electronics tinkerer, and he’d ripped out the guts of the original … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Electronics repair”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1940,1941,1943,1942],"class_list":["post-5296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-audio","tag-av","tag-second-hand","tag-subwoofer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5296"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5297,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5296\/revisions\/5297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}