Pages Navigation

Thursday 17 December 2015

What's a monk to do? I guess a monk's to do this.


What probably happened to my JMP-1 preamp is that, as I soldered in the new capacitors and the battery holder, my soldering iron produced static, which damaged one or more of the sensitive computer chips on the board:


 
 
A technician would have used an anti-static station with their soldering iron. I used what I had, which didn't include one of those.
 
 
I don't know if those chips can be bought individually, but I do know that the whole JMP-1 PCB (printed circuit board - the green thing everything else is attached to) can be.

It turns out that the Marshall distributor for Canada, where I live, sells replacement PCBs for the JMP-1, which come with all the electrical components preinstalled, apart from the transformer, which needs to be transferred from an existing JMP-1. Basically, even though the JMP-1 is a discontinued model from Marshall, a JMP-1 can still be purchased, without the chassis and transformer. I think that's pretty cool.

This is a picture I was sent of the replacement unit:




It's multiple pieces (main PCB, tube-holder PCB, front display PCB) that are presented as one flat PCB board, like one of those kids books with pages of thick paper that get punched out and assemble into things, like an airplane or whatever. Cept this one turns into an amazing sound machine.

Buying one of these will be cheaper than to buy a used JMP-1 (which would also reduce the overall number of JMP-1's in circulation), and putting this into the JMP-1 chassis that I already have will make it pretty much a new JMP-1. That won't actually make it better in any way than if I hadn't fried the one I have while installing new capacitors, and I'll still install a battery holder to replace the stock solder-in battery. I think that I just killed my own excitement. Naw, it'll be great to have running again.
 

C~ Soundscapes
 

No comments:

Post a Comment