I don't reccomend Apex Jr amps (1 Viewer)

[Aaron_Morris]

I purchased an Apex Jr plate amp from this company back at christmas. About a week ago it died on me. During a song the amp faded in and out and finally completely out. To me, it seems as though a capacitor bit the dust or maybe an opamp. Anyway, I emailed Steve at Apex Jr and explained what happened. He said to check the fuse and call him. I did, the fuse is fine ( as per a DMM).
The power light still comes on and glows green, so it doesn't seem to be going inot protection and there is still turn on/off thump.
I called him back and he told me that he cannot replace it nor work on it. He said that he is a one man operation and he just sells them. What I don't understand is why there is no warranty at all. Granted this is likely a fine peice of electronics, but stuff still happens. I don't see how me, the consumer should be at fault of a manufacturing defect. The amp was never pushed hard, never given extreme loads, never abused at all and there is nothing to be done about it.
Unless I can get something worked out with him, then I simply don't recommend buying a peice of equipment from him, unless you are comfortable chancing the loss of your money.

 

[Chu Gai]

Well I guess you should've gotten the warranty issue straightened out from the get go. People who buy used off of ebay or audigon are in the same predicament. Sorry to hear about your experiences. Have you looked at your other components, like the receiver to make sure it's not an issue elsewhere? Maybe borrow a sub from someone.

 

[Joe Ku]

Sorry to hear about your delima. Its all to help enhance the do it yourself experiance (just kidding). Unfortunately, giving up a warrenty is part of the tradeoff for price and serviceability in many DIY projects and we all get burned at some point.

Fortunately, the schematics are freely available and the amp does not use any propriatary parts (I also own this amp, but bought through a different distributer), so you should be able to get it serviced for a reasonable price if you can't do it yourself. Let the service guy know upfront you have the schematics for it and they may cut you a break as he will not have to buy or find it himself. Call around, a smaller shop may be your best bet though. I would bet it will still cost around $50 or so.

Good Luck

 

[Aaron_Morris]

Well, I feel compatent enough to do some service work on it if someone wouldn't mind helping me. I can solder when needed.
If someone could just help me trouble shoot what I need to do, that would be awesome.

And yeah, I suppose I should have asked about warranty when I frist went into the deal. Live an learn. I made the mother of all mistakes, I assumed. I made the assumption that there would be at least a 1 year warranty since it was bought new, not referub or otherwise used in anyway.

I am not bitter about it, just wiser I suppose.

 

[Michael R Price]

Aaron,

I would check the power supply voltages (+, -, ground) and the output transistors. You can remove the output transistors (large plastic devices mounted on heatsink) and check their junction drops with the multimeter. If it's an IC based amp you could buy a new power IC for a few bucks. Besides that, I'm not sure how to troubleshoot the amp besides taking out and verifying each component. (That's a pain.)