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I know this thread is 6 years old but for everyone who is running the 700/700B - get it restored and add speaker protection, for the love of God.
I just bought one in almost immaculate, not misused condition and it worked fine until one channel blew (sparks,smoke, big DC on speaker outputs) for no reason at all, without playing anything, if I wasn't at home it would've probably started a fire.
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Yes apparently
The parts fail.
My brother one from new (30 years ) and the power transistors die , the carbon power resisters fail.
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I was shocked because I just bought it, the first day it worked fine and on the next day it went bananas directly after turning it on. I had a 400 and 2000 in the past that worked great but I surely won't be buying any PL gear anytime soon, lol.
Repairing them without a full refurb is a bit pointless, it will probably die again soon or the other channel will go.:(
If someone wonders how does it sound when it blows up - at first a loud boom and then like a very dirty volume knob on maximum volume. Unplug the speaker cable ASAP as the amp will still discharge through the main PSU caps.
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Phase Linear
I had the same problem a few years ago.
Bought speaker protection cards that was designed for FL.
Do not know if the seller is still in business.
You can try here;
Don Imlay <[email protected]>
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Isn't Bob Carver running a business that also re-furbs Flame Linears?
Or perhaps his daughter or other family members, if I'm remembering correctly?
http://www.carveraudiorepair.com/index.html
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I do recall ours blowing and my bowel movement as a result was particularly violent.
To be honest there are better options around new like class D plate amps if you are biamping.
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I'm sure you can buy better sounding amps for the same money today but they all miss the 'wipers' :bouncy: There is just that something in that old heavy metal stuff from the 70's.
Even better option would be to buy a totaled PL 400 or 700, sell whats salvageable inside and stick some Class D Hypex 700 (would match the original power nicely) or even the newest nCore modules in the old case.
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Yes and with Hypex it is still a 700 :)
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I used to have the 700B back 1986 and I can say it sounds nice, however you have to be careful not to short the outputs or overdrive because it will burn your speaker and there goes the name Flame Linear. Now you want a beast find a D500, I used to drive 4 double scoops loaded with 2225H and it would not even feel it.
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When I was a touring rock musician more than 40 years ago, on an off night I was watching a friend's band play in a club when their Flame Linear 700 lived up to its nickname by melting-down in the middle of a their performance and setting fire to the 4 JBL drivers it was running (in A7-clone enclosures) in spectacular fashion. Thankfully the bartender was quick on-the-draw with a fire extinguisher, otherwise the cabs would have ignited. BTW, much of the audience thought it was part of the act. (In those days every band, including ours, used pyro in their shows, and club owners and bartenders always had fire extinguishers handy, just in case.) After seeing that, my personal rule-of-thumb has always been to never ever use a Phase Linear to power anything that I cared about in the least. Ever. (ever).
Our band used Crown DC 300As and old [Cerwin] Vega amps and never had a problem, except for the time the roadies forgot to roll-down the door at the rear of the truck and one of the road cases with a pair of Vega amps rolled out on the way to the next gig. Fortunately we got them back (we had ID cards on the inside top lids of all the cases and the farmer who found the amps got hold of us). The roadies paid for the gas to drive the 200 miles and pick up the amps. They worked fine, even after falling out of the truck at what must have been at least 50 MPH.
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All the older power amp will sooner or later be able to have this problem.
Not only Flame Linear. And they will make great damage to the speakers.
This summer I have mounted speaker protection on all my older power amps. Phase Linears, Crowns, Marantz and diy Pass Labs.
I've used Velleman K4700 kit. They come with built in power supply.
Delivered for 115volt and 230volt.
They are quick and also takes away turn on and turn off click.
Velleman
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I've had a Crown DC300A-II with completely toasted middle part of the PCB, believe it or not it still worked :D:D The sine was of course distorted, around 200mV DC offset but hey - it still amplified and didn't blow the outputs! :p
Just look at that op-amp socket (the opamp itself is already removed but it was still in place by then).
It looked like this: http://i68.tinypic.com/et5vty.jpg