What's new

Crown DC-300A problem (1 Viewer)

SethS

Auditioning
Joined
Dec 8, 2002
Messages
5
I recently hooked up an old Crown DC-300A in our garage to help pump out some tunes while I workout. Anyways after fiddling with it for a while, I came to the conclusion that one channel is shot but I'd like a second opinion. Channel 2 plays everything beautifully, whereas Channel 1 plays everything as if I have a busted speaker.

To troubleshoot the matter, I first thought I may indeed have a busted speaker so I switched the speaker cables and to my surprise, the other speaker sounded busted. This ruled out a speaker being the culprit. I then swapped the input lines, also made no difference, the same speaker was at fault. Finally settling on the fact that I may have a bad set of output cables, I swapped each channel's cables, but the same speaker was playing poorly.

So now I've narrowed it down to having a bad channel and would like to know a couple of things.

1) Did I miss something?
2) Is there a common reason for an amp's channel to make a speaker sound busted?
 

Karl_Luph

Supporting Actor
Joined
Apr 5, 2002
Messages
974
Yea SethS, I've got a SoundTech PL1402 amp with a similar problem. The left channel output buzzes when I turn the amp on(it's worst when I first power it on and then it drops down alittle) and even though the signal going through that channel can be amplified the buzz and distortion goes with it. If I bridge the amp it does the same thing through both channels. In the normal mode the right channel is crystal clear. I looked inside the amp for signs of capacitor failure(Loose connection or leakage) or loose connections or arcing on circuit board and didn't see anything out of the ordinary. The left channel input and output connectors appear to be tight.The only thing i didn't check was disassymbling the rest of the amp's casing to get a look at the bottom side of the circuit board. I now just use the one channel that works and leave the bad channel turned all the way down and nothing plugged into the left channel. I hope this helps you out and maybe someone can shed some light on this type of amplifier problem. I really hoped it was just a capacitor or resister problem. Those Crown amps are great units.
 

Karl_Luph

Supporting Actor
Joined
Apr 5, 2002
Messages
974
I was curious to see if you ever figured out the problem with your Crown amp SethS. Someone else had a post on a Crown amp and it reminded me of yours.
 

SethS

Auditioning
Joined
Dec 8, 2002
Messages
5
Sadly, I haven't. I talked to someone else about it and they thought it sounded like I had some bad transistors in the channel. I haven't really checked into getting it looked at by someone so I've just been listening to everything in mono :)
 

Karl_Luph

Supporting Actor
Joined
Apr 5, 2002
Messages
974
So are you just running a "y" coonector into the good channel input on the amp and not using the bad channel at all?
 

SethS

Auditioning
Joined
Dec 8, 2002
Messages
5
Two Y's actually. I have left and right channel outputs on my cd player, that goes to a Y and the remaining connector hooks into the input on the amp. I have one output wire for that one channel so I split that with a Y to power each speaker.

Looks a little like this:

CD >- AMP -< speaker 1 & 2
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Top