I recently went away on vacation & pulled the power cable out of the wall without turning off the power switch on the rear panel. I came home & plugged the cable back into the wall, but now the amp has no power. I checked all six fuses, but they all look fine. Having guests over tonight and need the stereo system to work!!! The tubes do not light up either.
I suggest checking the fuses with a simple DVM. Likely one is blown.
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Agree. Pull each and verify electrical continuity. I never trust visual inspection because the break can sometimes be very subtle to detect by eyeballing the fuse.
I never pull the plug of any of my components without complete power down (including a master power switch if the box has one). And I never plug a component in without verifying the master power switch is off. Take this as a lesson learned. Many modern components have designed in soft start to prevent a big surge that can pop fuses and degrade the lifetime of components. That surge in the voltage domain can occur when pulling the plug, btw, through the back EMF the dI/dt will cause. That’s not conducive to component longevity either.
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You can’t diagnose a fuse by looking at it even if it’s a glass tube.
99.999999% chance it’s a fuse. Most likely at the rear.
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Make sure your power cable is properly seated. One of my cats gets around my gear and regularly moves power cords enough that the equipment won’t power up. At close inspection they look fine but an extra firm push is needed to power up the gear.
Thanks for the suggestions. I’ll get out the meter & start testing.
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Good luck.
And please let us know what you learn.
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Sage advice indeed.
Once I found the fuse holder not correctly tighten, my 0.2 cents. Otherwise I’d tend to think the fuse itself is the culprit.
Did you try plugging another device to the wall socket, just to be sure the power is ok?
Did you try with another power cord?
I doubt pulling out the power cable is going to damage anything because a fuse is an over-current device and pulling out a plug is cutting current.
My amplifier has soft start but no power on-off switch on the rear panel. Soft starts are usually electronically controlled separate from the rear power. A rear power on-off switch usually seems to be for isolation and powering off standby.
PSA regenerators have a rear on-off switch, as do many conditioners (including my Puritan) and the easiest is to connect everything to one of those and just flick that single on-off switch.
Some servers did not like losing power and could screw up the software. It’s happened to me, I have mine powered by UPS.
The BHK250 uses a high over-current H-rated fuse and I would be curious if any fuses have been changed.
There is a single low current fuse to the tubes. If there is power coming out of the wall, that sees likely to be the culprit. Paul said that PSA will happily send out replacements.
at high currents (hundreds to thousands of amps) it can so I assume the effect is the same but proportionally smaller. Fast break/make switches are a good thing.
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I have a 300A 400v on-off switch in my electrical installation. Pulling out the cable is not an option because it is encased in steel trunking.
I had valve amplifiers with rear panel switches, the maker sold PSA and he advised me to use the PSA regenerator app to power them on and off. Did it hundreds of times, because they had soft start. Those amps, Devialet and now Luxman all had soft start, no fuses and no on-off switches. The soft start ranged from 10 to 30 seconds. A very good option.
Hopefully @stevehardy1 just has to get PSA to send him a replacement fuse.
Does @stevehardy1 have a flicking logo light?
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Thanks to you all for you input on this. I had to go out of town & just got back. Was finally able to test the fuses for continuity and discovered that one was in fact blown. Facing the rear of the amp, it’s the fuse directly to the left of the power inlet. PS Audio is nice enough to send me a couple at no charge. Thankfully it was just a fuse (I hope LOL) and nothing more.
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Solved! Exceptional!
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I love happy audiophile endings.
Carry on!
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Glad to know. Enjoy your amp!
we will all arrive saturday night for a celebration
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