Attention B&K Components owners!

MannyE

MannyE

Exterminate!
Some possible good news is on the horizon. After making a few calls to ATI, the company that bought the rights to the B&K name (to apparently do nothing with it) and getting the right guy on the phone, I was able to find out about Stargate Electronics in Farmingdale, NY.

Apparently Stargate bought all the remaining spare parts from the B&K factory and is uniquely qualified to make repairs on corrupted EEPROMS.

I have offered my unit up as a guinea pig. So far, they have been very responsive and professional. After sending my Reference 50 Series 2 in to them, I got a call two days after it had been delivered. Apparently the power supplies (there are apparently more than one in this unit) had gone bad and were not delivering the required amount of current, voltage or whatever to the internal processor which became corrupt.

The quote for repair (reasonable, I thought) was given and I am sending the check today. I will keep you guys posted as to the results. I hope we have finally found a way to keep our orphaned products working for another few years.

If they didn't sound so good, I wouldn't go through the effort, but the only alternative that sounds as good as my Reference 50 is the Marantz which goes for well over $1000 bucks (MSRP is 1699..I don't know what the street price is). Repairing the Ref 50 including shipping will probably not exceed $450 including the shipping.

I know I can find a Ref 50 on ebay for less but like all vintage electronics, and especially "new vintage" like the B&K preamp processors, will all by now need a little TLC. I prefer the peace of mind that once repaired, it will give me many more years of trouble free operation.
 
Great work! Thanks for sharing this with us ...
I have a couple B&K amps I love to bits ... good to know there is still a source for repairs!
 
That's Great .I was wondering what ATI was ever going to do with the B&K line .I have one of their 5 channel amps. The 7250 series 2. Five channel.which I really love
 
I'm hoping it works out. I'm reserving any opinion until the preamp comes back. No one else can fix them because once the "computer" part gets bricked it seems like there isn't anything to be done. Amps I think can pretty much be repaired anywhere, but I don't know if they also had proprietary stuff going on inside.
 
MannyE said:
Some possible good news is on the horizon. After making a few calls to ATI, the company that bought the rights to the B&K name (to apparently do nothing with it) and getting the right guy on the phone, I was able to find out about Stargate Electronics in Farmingdale, NY.

Apparently Stargate bought all the remaining spare parts from the B&K factory and is uniquely qualified to make repairs on corrupted EEPROMS.

I have offered my unit up as a guinea pig. So far, they have been very responsive and professional. After sending my Reference 50 Series 2 in to them, I got a call two days after it had been delivered. Apparently the power supplies (there are apparently more than one in this unit) had gone bad and were not delivering the required amount of current, voltage or whatever to the internal processor which became corrupt.

The quote for repair (reasonable, I thought) was given and I am sending the check today. I will keep you guys posted as to the results. I hope we have finally found a way to keep our orphaned products working for another few years.

If they didn't sound so good, I wouldn't go through the effort, but the only alternative that sounds as good as my Reference 50 is the Marantz which goes for well over $1000 bucks (MSRP is 1699..I don't know what the street price is). Repairing the Ref 50 including shipping will probably not exceed $450 including the shipping.

I know I can find a Ref 50 on ebay for less but like all vintage electronics, and especially "new vintage" like the B&K preamp processors, will all by now need a little TLC. I prefer the peace of mind that once repaired, it will give me many more years of trouble free operation.
Click to expand...

I don't know why this software did this, I only meant to quote :

"Apparently the power supplies (there are apparently more than one in this unit) had gone bad and were not delivering the required amount of current, voltage or whatever to the internal processor which became corrupt."

I don't like EPROMs in audio equipment at all, but that is neither here nor there in the big picture. I happen to have solid evidence of a manufacturer purposely making a circuit that would corrupt the data and make a firmware upgrade necessary. Mitsubishi in a DLP.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/29948706/mitsdpps.jpg

There is no other possible purpose for R9088 and C9087. I defy any engineer in here to describe any other purpose for those two components. Plus the fact that we live in an age where engineers are taught not to waste money, not to put ANYTHING in there that is not absolutely necessary. That means things that enhance features.

I am not accusing B&K of that at all, they are a bit different. But it happens. When the Vcc or Vdd or whatever floats in and out of the acceptable range it can corrupt the data. Sometime the hard reset pops up during a write cycle and the thing with data is there is no where, there is a when. Lose just one pulse and you can wreck a PC motherboard, or the software in anytihing that is not hard coded. And almost nothing is hard coded.
 
I guess that's just one more reason to have a good power conditioner. Not that it will stop the power supplies from going bad, but at least it's a layer of protection. And here in the lightning capital of the US, I have one on every outlet. Mostly because I'ma cheap bastard and I get them on craigslist for next to nothing. One day I'll spring for a whole-house conditioner/ups and a natural gas backup generator, but that day hasn't arrived yet.
 
No, the caps go bad. In an SMPS the one right off the rectifier goes bad first because of the ripple current and then the voltages do not have the right ratio for one, and the lower sources do this. It can also happen in analog PSes but it is not as rare. They change caps in them for noise. In an SMPS you change caps to avoid real problems. I remember one whole bunch of units that used the 5 volt line as a reference and they caps started going bad on that line which sent all the other sources sky high. This happened to MILLIONs of units, literally. I fixed thousands of them and when one person has fixed thousands of something, it had to be pretty common.
 
So in that case no amount of power conditioning is going to make a difference. Well, it took about 10 years or so to happen. So if I get another 10 out of it I will be happy.

I guess ai should also take a look at the amps inside the Definitive Texh BP2002 towers. They are going on 20 years.
 
JURB said:
No, the caps go bad. In an SMPS the one right off the rectifier goes bad first because of the ripple current and then the voltages do not have the right ratio for one, and the lower sources do this. It can also happen in analog PSes but it is not as rare. They change caps in them for noise. In an SMPS you change caps to avoid real problems. I remember one whole bunch of units that used the 5 volt line as a reference and they caps started going bad on that line which sent all the other sources sky high. This happened to MILLIONs of units, literally. I fixed thousands of them and when one person has fixed thousands of something, it had to be pretty common.
Click to expand...

What would this look like in the circuit? You'd see the rectified full-wave, but then no "fill-in" due to the bad filter cap? So, across the cap, you'd see same waveform as off the rectifier. All this is before the variable switching to create the variable voltage output. Do I have that approximately right? Thanks in advance.
 
You might have to clarify the question. What would what look like ? The waveform ?

Open my Dropbox link in a new tab, I will try to explain it using that rather than looking for a print for some twenty year old unit.

On the left is D9013. That is the rectifier, high speed like 100 KHz square wave high speed. When its ESR (effective series resistance, many references to that) increases due to age, the square wave starts appearing at the output of the rectifier. Nothing goes above the peak of that, so due to the coil smoothing it out, it puts out less voltage.

This is a half wave rectifier, as is was in the VCRs I mentioned. These are actually flyback convertors because the diodes generally conduct after the switching transistor turns off. In other words the run off the inductive kick. Some can and do run the other way but those are called forward convertors and are not common because of the design constraints, like having to make a transistor turn ON fast, which is harder than making a transistor turn OFF fast. These are all buck convertors. It was the way for quite some time. Recently a new generation of SMPSes has cropped up but that is not in this conversation. (in fact I wonder if this is nearing a hijack)

So, in a buck or flyback convertor, when the feedback drops it puts out more voltage. To do that it usually lowers frequency but some only increase the duty cycle (on time) of the switching transistor. The current in the primary ramps up more until the regulation loop is satisfied.

When the efficiency of the rectifier drops enough, it blows the switching transistor because ita voltage gets too high.

Now in the example I showed, some may argue that they were trying to prevent that from happening, but I call bullshit. There are probably ten different ways to protect it, half of them costing no more at all. They did this on purpose.

Almost like a prelude to having to upgrade your smartphone all the time. And that is how business is. And I am sick of it and that is why most of my stereo equipment is old enough for a military pension.
 
So what you are saying is that the B&K like most modern equipment is built to fail after a few years on purpose assuming that in our throwaway society the consumer will opt to buy a new unit and EOL the old one?

Recent experience does add some credence to that opinion.

However, instead of just stating the problem and leaving it at that, how about a solution? Many people upgrade their cars when the factory decides to save a penny. Why don't we do the same for ridiculously expensive electronics? If I pay $3,000 for a preamp I fully expect my grandkids to have the option of using it.

What can we do to avoid the same issue from happening again? Is there a way to modify the power supplies or maybe replace them? Can we upgrade the capacitors?

We already know almost every Reference 30, 50 and 70 is getting ready to crap out probably because of this issue. Avoiding it would make these units much more useful.
 
Manny . I agree with your above statement as well. It would actually be nice if there were some what of enforced regulatory law to be enforced as far as Build Quality etc so they can't be using cheap parts with our gear .Considering its far from cheap .Certainly not all of us can afford to keep shelling out tons of money like its nothing for our gear.One thing I have always done to try and prolong problems.is always keep my gear very well ventilated and always away from any kind of moisture.One thing that really kills electronics is heat
 
Last edited:
I doubt any kind of legislation will ever happen. Much less in the crazy audiophile world. As long as the product is safe, the government can care less if it lasts 100 years or 100 seconds.

I also keep my sensitive electronics well ventilated. I used to have a dedicated A/C duct routed into the equipment rack, but I haven't set that back up since I moved the system. Its coming though.

So is there any way to improve the condition of these power supplies or to replace them with something better suited that wont brick the EPROM?

Failing that, should I remove the brand new Eprom when I get the unit back and make a clone? I figure if I have spares all I have to do is repair the power supplies when they crap out and ruin the ones in the unit. Right?
 
JURB said:
I will try to explain it ...
Click to expand...

Thank you very much for your description of operation. I've got a sick SMPS coming in from a friend and I'm not very familiar with the beasts. Live and learn I hope (esp. the 'live' part...)
 
UPDATE: The shop has called and let me know the B&K is repaired and on its way back to me. They also called again to let me know they had installed the latest firmware they had for the B&K Ref 50 S2. He even said they had a newer one than the one they had put in, but that it was buggy as B&K didn't have time to perfect it before they went belly up. I'm looking forward to putting the home theater back together and flinging the Onkyo placeholder A/V receiver into Biscayne Bay.

I will report back once everything Is up and running.
 
Congrats Manny! It's a great feeling getting something working again that you love after a long wait.

For those reading this thread, the late 90's early 2000s had a batch of bad capacitors that failed prematurely. The Apple e-Mac and I-Mac (lampshade) are good examples, but they affected the whole electronics industry. I've seen what happens in a few e-Macs I had, and they made a mess.

Coming from the computer industry, I used to have to work all night when a thunderstorm came through, until companies started putting in UPSs everywhere. It was actually quite striking when you compared companies that used them vs those that didn't. Power surges are very hard on any equipment, but especially computer equipment, and a lot of equipment including stereo gear is basically a computer appliance. So if you want to really protect your sensitive equipment, a ups would be a very good thing. Heat kills electronics for sure, as does static electricity. Try grounding yourself before touching your gear. Better still, put in a humidifier if you live in an area that gets cold in the winter. I use the metal sides of my stereo rack to ground myself before touching my gear in the living room. Power supplies are also built better now.
 
I am just glad to know that my B&K stuff has a place to go when it feels sick, And it's nice to know that the place is professional and competent!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

estreeter
B&K Components ?
Replies
19
Views
7K
7.62
7.62
Estring
B&K or Crown Amp?
Replies
3
Views
431
Estring
Estring
welcomdmat
B&K Amplifier Modification
2
Replies
25
Views
4K
welcomdmat
welcomdmat
Vistance
Adcom or B&K preamp?
2
Replies
25
Views
10K
DON73
D
MannyE
B&K vs Marantz?
Replies
6
Views
1K
MannyE
MannyE
Back
Top Bottom