pioneer 1014 craped out

Did you have everything hooked up to a surge protector? This might be the thing you need to prevent this from happening again. Monster makes a pretty good one, I have it (don't recall the model) but when I go home I'll post it. It's about 100 bucks but well worth the money and possibly the way you can keep the receiver with out worries.

I think you will find that this is a very uncomman occurance that was either caused by the lack of a surge protector or a bad unit to begin with. I would definitly give the Pioneer another chance. Good Luck!

I own the 1014 and this exact thing happended to me a week and a half ago. There was a power outage for less than two seconds and when the power came back on the MCACC light was flashing and the receiver would not power up. I bought the receiver 6 months ago so I'm hoping warranty will cover it.

It was hooked up to a surge suppressor (one I've had for a few years albeit) and nothing else attached to the surge supressor was damaged (HDTV, DVD, cable box).

I took it in to the closest authorized service center and they still have it. I took it in on the 14th and don't have it back yet.

Well, I called the repair shop today. It's been 1 1/2 weeks. They have finally looked at it, but they haven't figured out what's wrong with it yet. I didn't mention the surge because I'm afraid if I do they'll tell me it won't be covered under warranty.

This had better not take much longer because I'm without any receiver at all now.

Sounds like Pioneer needs to address this problem. You shouldn't need to have a surge protector for any reciever. If it really needs one the manufacturer should have either supplied one or had one built in to the unit.

I have had many many pieces of equipment over the years. Used them with transformers when I was overseas and so on. I have never had a component fail because of lack of a surge protector. Or for any other reason that I can recall.

I had another receiver hooked up to this same surge suppressor for the past few years without any problem.

It does sound like this Pioneer is overly sensitive.

Man I wonder if the 1015 suffers from this same issue. Seems to be too many cases for this to be an issue that can be ignored for the potential buyer.

If I don't get it back in the next week or so and the Auth. Service Center continues to tell me they can't figure out what's going on with it I wonder what Pioneer will do?

Maybe a call to Pioneer is in order.

I have a hard time believing that both Evan and his father's 1014s broke down with the same issue. Unless something was setup incorrectly like an amp being shorted or possibly an outlet being wired wrong for polarity.

But as far as this occurring too frequently to be considered a major problem, I disagree. If this was a serious issue you would have heard a lot more about this issue in this forum and others due to the popularity of the 1014.

I had a Sony DVP-S360 which reportedly had a faulty design of the laser assembly. The unit failed after a year-and-a-half of use. There were multiple reports of problems regarding that model in this forum and others around the web. Check the other user review sites for similar reports. I don't see any smoking guns here. Every manufacturer can have a bad batch.

This is a silly statement, Everybody should use a surge protector if they value their equipment. Whenever the power goes out or comes back on, no matter how gentle you may think it seems, there is always a surge. Think of it like you turning on the faucet real quick. No matter where you set it, there is always a burst before it comes back down to where you set it.

Just because you've never had a problem with surges doesn't mean that thousands of people do. I live in OKC and the foot traffic Best Buy/ Circuit City / Ultimate Electronics ALWAYS see a significant increase after a storm. The increase directly correlates to how bad the storm was (I.E, the more surges/power outages, the more people). If you get a good surge protector with a warranty backed by a reputable source, you can get equipment repaired or replaced for free.

Not that I think power surges caused the problem here. I think they just got units from a bad batch.

Quote

"This is a silly statement, Everybody should use a surge protector if they value their equipment. Whenever the power goes out or comes back on, no matter how gentle you may think it seems, there is always a surge".

Unquote

Do you work for a surge protection company? The above statement is not true and if you really knew what happens when the power comes back on you wouldn't be saying this.

Facts are, when the power comes back on after a blackout the current draw to get everything running again, particularly motors and some lighting products like Mercury Vapor, High pressure sodium etc causes a short term voltage drop. The voltage does not spike high but low. Your surge protector doesn't even function at those voltages. If you really want to protect your poorly designed components then buy an APU which will maintain voltage at a constant and you will be able to enjoy the stereo when there is a power outage. At the very least this type of unit will give you the time needed to shut off the stereo before the power comes back on. But if you buy products that are not prone to breaking you won't need either type of unit. I am not just talking. I had a voltage monitor installed in my house on 2 occasions and the record proved this to be true. If you notice your TV set as the power comes back on the picture is not full screen for a second or so. This also proves the voltage is low not high.

I have been enjoying audio for over 40 years and note once has a piece of equipment failed as a result of a "power surge". I haven't used surge protectors in the past and I think I will save my money for some new CDs or other accessories.

Now having said the above. Lightning is another story for sure. But if you think that little frigging power surge protector is going to stop a full lightning bolt that hits a power transformer in your neighborhood. Well forget it cause it won't. It's like putting a pillow to protect your head when a tractor trailer drives over it. Not much help is it.

It will be a month tomorrow since I took the receiver in to be fixed. Supposedly they finally figured out what needed replaced and ordered the parts yesterday. They expect them to be in Monday and so hopefully I'll have my receiver back by the end of next week.

Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Bryan,

Please let us know what they report on the service invoice.

I will. The guy told me what parts he ordered when I talked to him on the phone, but I was so shocked they actually were fixing it that I didn't pay attention to what he called them.

I have never used a surge protector on any components in 45 years and have never had a failure due to power outages. Lightning struck my house one time in 1977 which took out the well pump, TV, clock radio, and TV antenna lead-in wire. No surge protector will stop damage from lightning.

I have a Pioneer 1014 and had a Pioneer 810 before that. Evan describes an experience 99.99% of us have never had nor ever will have. Does anyone on this board actually believe this was a Pioneer problem? Why would the Elite series be immune to the problem? As others have pointed out, this is such a popular receiver that someone else surely would have reported it on this board.

Does anyone wonder why the DVD player, TV, and other componenets didn't fail at the same time as the receiver? Something is missing form Evan's description.

Well, I don't believe this is EvanW's problems anyhow, but I do feel necessary to respond. If you could predict how electricity acts whenever it comes back on, you would be a valued asset to the power companies when it comes to protecting their grids. Here's a few real life circumstances, which based on your simplistic theory, could never have occurred. Most of these came from an employee of OG&E (Oklahoma Gas and Electric), the first one happened in my neighborhood.

1. Lightning strikes a pole, travels past 14 arrestors on the poles without damaging a single one, only to fry out an entire substation. This in turn damaged equipment in 7 homes.

2. Power goes out due to a storm, when the power is restored it blows out 90% of all equipment plugged in within a 2 block radius and starts 4 electrical fires. The grid was fine and was not to blame.

3. Substation goes down due to birds who decided to land there (you'd have though they would have stayed away). Surge created travels 13 city blocks underground laterally and blows out equipment ONLY on the 8th floor of an office building. It bypassed the other floors on a shared breaker panel as well as other businesses along the way.



I wouldn't expect that a surge protector will stop that, but I've got a little over $250 into surge protectors throughout my house. The checks from the surge protector companies will cover all the equipment hooked up to it. And for less than half of the deductible of our homeowner's policy.

I do NOT work for a surge protector company, but I believe in getting some kind of insurance on things that are not easily replaced. There will definitely be people who never use them, but I'm not willing to take that chance. I don't go to the doctor enough to justify the cost of medical insurance, but I've got it because if something serious happens I could not afford an extended hospital stay.

Umm Let See. In 2000 I hooked up my home theater system with a surge protector and my Compaq computer to the outlet.I went out and when I got back It was dead. All my other components were on. Sorry I have no Aliens or ghost where I live( I think). I took it to a friend and he said my hard drive was fried. After I had the hard drive replace and brought a surge protector I ran into a friend of mine who told me on that night he had to replace his computer the same night mine went out. seems he was in his office working , which is blocks from where I live, when a surge came through and knockout his computers with no surge protector. I will always have a protector since my home theater had one and my computer didnt.

I always use a surge suppressor and as I stated above, my 1014 WAS plugged into the surge suppressor when the power flicked off then right back on.

Everything else was hooked up to the surge suppressor too, and the 1014 was the only piece of equipment harmed. My only guess is that the receiver is more 'sensitive' to fluctuations in power. I don't know.

Be careful with this one. Make sure that the UPS you get is one designed for HT, not simply one for a computer. If it says that the battery output waveform is PWM Sinewave, then the output is a sawtooth waveform (NOT a smooth sinewave). This is OK for computers, but not so good for AV equipment. If the Pioneer is overly sensitive to power abnormalities, this might be a step backwards, not forwards.... Good luck!

Looks like it's going to be another month.

They called today and are now telling me that the part isn't due in today, but the 25th!

Damn a$$ Wookies.

I didn't actually talk to them myself so I didn't get all of the specifics.

To funny... The thread turned into a sort of pissing match about the Virues and Short Commings of surge protectors and/or UPS devices.....


Remember everything in life and equipment has up sides and down sides. Both postions on surge protectors are valid here.

I have discontinued use of them on all my HT gear personally. But I certainly don't dismiss that in certain circumstances they could help some.

Anything that demands a lot of power especially on a demand basis, I do think the surge protector and/or UPS hurts you more than helps you overall.

I bought the Panamax M8C-EX surge suppressor. I decided on it because it also protects against voltage drops. From what I read, Panamax seems to be pretty highly regarded. I hope I made a good choice.