Blackstar Club 40 - Have you ever seen such a failure?

[jukelemon]

Hi all!


So this Blackstar Club 40 comes in. Power/Volume surging in and out.


Open it up and see 10 caps look to have exploded.

Getting high voltage when I probe the top of the power supply caps.

The "have you seen" question is this... I am ALSO picking up 250-400vdc when I probe that rust/brown residue.


It is as if the caps have bonded together on the top of the board?

[Platefire]

Wow! Looks like pancakes on the grill! Well, you know where to start at---might be a lot more to be found?

[jukelemon]

---might be a lot more to be found?

Yeah...I am afraid that may be the case and that's a lot of time and money to spend for the customer.


These are known to have bad boards all the time and I am weary to repair these caps and then find another issue.


I may just buy another board if they are still available.  I see them for ~200.00

[tubeswell]

I may just buy another board if they are still available.  I see them for ~200.00

Is that for an empty board? This could get unreasonably costly - you might want to check back with the owner first.

[jukelemon]

I may just buy another board if they are still available.  I see them for ~200.00

Is that for an empty board? This could get unreasonably costly - you might want to check back with the owner first.

Oh no no.  Completed board i.e. literally a drop in.

It is what a service center would do in other words.  The caps alone would run ~100.00 (I am not buying cheap caps like what came with it) so I think it makes sense IF he wants to fix it.  I only posted a pic of a few caps.  There are 10 that look just like these which makes me very suspect that other things are going on AND why I think a new board is the way to go as opposed to spending the money on caps only to then find out other components have failed-which is very very common on these amps.

If it were me...I would just buy another amp OR buy another used Club 40.  They are 250-300 all day long on the used market.  BUT he likes THIS one soooo who I am to judge :)