I am in the process of preparing to fix one of these myself. My Velodyne SPL 1000 series ii is completely dead, no signs of life whatsoever. I found this other video super helpful... it is a 4hr long video of a guy recapping an entire Velodyne SPL10BV, with an pre-amp/amp that appears to be almost identical to the SPL10. Some of the components on the boards look slightly different, and the boards are in a different orientation, but you will see the near complete resemblance to the 3 boards in the SPL10. You can literally watch him take the entire thing apart, with his commentary, its a goldmine!
You have no idea how much I appreciate you sharing this. It is exactly what I needed! I just bought a SPL-1200 II (SPL12RBG) via auction, condition was clearly disclosed as powers on, no further testing was done. Woofer looked good via picture. There was also a picture showing the blue power light was lit up. So I rolled the dice. Anyway, it arrived I got it out, checked the woofer via equal pressure press test; it was fine. Set parameters of low pass, gain, etc. Hooked up sub cable then plugged it in to power. Turned it on, blue power light was on, I then fed it some signal via LFE. But not much sound, like zilch, when I got my ear close to the woofer there was a little sputtering sound, not quite a crackle, but very low in volume, it was the source material, but very garbled, it increased with increased gain but it was not outputting much sound, only a tiny bit louder kind of a scratchy sputtering, the woofer cone was not moving much at all. I thought the woofer was blown. So then I jump on the net to AudioKarma and google. I quickly find out I need to determine which is the problem? Is it the subwoofer, or is it the amplifier? Most indications were that it wasn't the woofer, and that I could do a 9volt battery test on the subwoof to see if it was operational. So I hooked up the subwoof to the 9 volt, and woofer cone responded with either pushing out or pulling in, depending if I switched the wire on the 9 volt to negative and positive, and vice versa. Ok, so subwoofer seems to be fine. So I start learning about the amplifier in these things via AudioKarma and Youtube. I learn what problems they typically have, and how to diagnose and then fix them. I learn it is possible to fix, but it's not so easy, mainly due to this being a dangerous amp to work on if you are not careful. I also learn about EBC electronics, and hear they have an excellent reputation and deep experience in fixing these Velo amps for a reasonable fee. By this time, I took the amp out of the gloss black cabinet/box, looked it over, nothing looked bad to my amateur eye, well there was a little something, no blown caps, no burn marks, etc, except I think they're resistors, they are labeled as R3 and R4 on the board. Appearance-wise they looked like tan twinkies with different color circular stripes around them, although they were both tan, the colored stripes around them were a bit different from each other. Out of each of the ends of these twinkies, wire legs connect them to the board. They are located right in front of the mesh-side of the aluminum cage near the edge of this top board which the aluminum cage structure sits on top of. The resistor at R4 on the board has a bit of darkening down the length of it, which could be stress or burn marks. Also where both R3 and R4 connectors connect to the board at the bottom of the legs, the wire looks kind of darkened, maybe burnt, or perhaps oxidized; at these junctures where these resistors connect to the board, things are darkened as well. Every other connection point on the board has a very clean silver shine to it. Should I replace these resistors? Could they be worn out or cooked? Could they result in the sputtering low volume from the sub? I took some pictures of the amp as it was, to be able to refer back to it, if necessary. Anyway around this point, I started to try and take apart the aluminum cage for visual inspection purposes within the alum cage. I removed a few screws but then I watched a youtube video, in the comments the owner of EBC electronics chimed in, and advised against amateur DIY on this amplifier because it is so dangerous to work on if you don't know what you're doing. I also saw on EBC electronics that they charge more if someone attempted to fix the amp. I understand that since an amateur could make these amps even more dangerous for the tech to work on. I am trying to get started with this hobby and already have some things to get started. Although today I learned that I need a good solder sucker. But I'm a bit stuck. I'm trying to figure out if I should have a professional like EBC fix it, or if I should try to fix it myself and just be very, very careful? I have successfully replaced some capacitors on Def Tech 7006 tower speakers sub-amp boards. But doing that I never worked on it while plugged in. I only applied power after I replaced the caps and reinstalled the the 7006's sub-amp. I used to do alot of car audio work, and did a good amount of RV electrical work, but to me it seems that 12 volt, and then RV AC & DC was much easier, simpler, and safer, than fixing this Velodyne amplifier. What do you think? If anyone has any advice I would like to hear it. I feel confident I could work on the amplifier without being electrocuted. I feel almost as confident that I could fix this amplifier. I have put back the 3 or 4 screws back that I took out of alum cage. Since I stopped here, I'm hoping can still get the cheaper repair rate from EBC. Or should I just try and fix it?
Full disclosure - I dropped these because of the cogent approach here to getting these units back on the road - and the comradery whilst doing so. I've only been lurking here for a couple (few?) decades, and recalled forgetting my old logon info some years ago, hence my "new" date of 2017. The opportunity to learn new things keeps me coming back. 