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impulse trailblazer questions

Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2010 10:21 pm
by wildcat
ive recently bought this machine off ebay, it runs on maygays epoch tech,

now a few questions regarding a few issues;
1, the power pack at the bottom is rather noisy, with a irritating buzzing noise, is this normal for these packs or is something loose etc? easy to sort out?

2, i get the 'famous' memory reset alarm 4.2, i know this is due to the battery being flat, so have left the machine on for 6-8 hours to charge it (there is charge in it now) but when i switched it on again today it still alarmed, is the battery knackered? theres no sign of leakage, just a tiny bit of greening at the bottom.

3, the speaker has also got a buzzing from it, is this a fault with the speaker and is it rectifiable?
can any of the techs help with some answers?
thanks in advance :?

Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2010 12:04 am
by clarkey1984
From my (limited) knowledge of batteries, any 'greening' as you put it, equals leakage, which probably means a fooked battery.

Thats all i know about on the tech side really mate, im sure someone more knowlegdeable will be along soon. :D

Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2010 9:13 am
by Matt Vinyl
Re: Speaker problem, I seem to recall that 'out in the wild' these were quite a noisy tech at the best of times, so it may be something that you can't do much about. Apologies again though for lack of techincal help. Am sure one of the techy regulars will be along shortly... ;)

Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2010 9:33 pm
by wildcat
cheers, i'm waiting patiently lol

Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2010 9:54 pm
by lee
most of these psu's the lid sometimes rests on the transformer and a little bit of packing stops it,but someimes it's the transformer buzzing.as for the battery,it is probably shafted after what you said,

Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2010 10:08 pm
by wildcat
lee wrote:most of these psu's the lid sometimes rests on the transformer and a little bit of packing stops it,but someimes it's the transformer buzzing.as for the battery,it is probably shafted after what you said,
yeah i thought that about the battery, its a shame i can't hide the power pack in another box to suppress the noise but it will overheat. :?

Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2010 10:16 pm
by JG
Re: The speaker issue. You should have two speakers in your cabinet. One sits to the left of the coin entry and one at the back, in the top of the cabinet. Check the wiring to see they are both connected.

Now these aren't high grade Bang and Olufsen speakers, they're little cheap imported 5watt RMS jobbies with speaker cable that has more resistance than bad traffic on the M25. A lot of the buzzing you pick up is from poor speaker cable. Additional buzzing beyond and above the normal level of buzzing one may expect would indicate a problem with potential difference (voltage) somewhere within the circuitry, someone who knows what they are talking about will be along shortly, do not panic.

Anyway, if you're totally bonkers, you may like to purchase some high end supergrade platinum Cambridge Audio speaker cable and providing the electronics aren't wonky, you should get wonderful hiss/buzz free hi-fidelity noise. You may also like to wire it up to a pair of Bang and Olufsen Nautilii, each unit costing about £9,599 each, but you would get super clear reproduction of the nasty clipped 32khz sound samples.

I've kept it quiet on here, but I also have an Epoch (Impulse) and there is a sort of regular swooshing in the background. I think it's like the machine's heartbeat or something similar, anyway there will be someone here who knows something in a bit, so hold tight.

Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2010 10:24 pm
by wildcat
cheers mate,lol! :P my machine has got just 1 speaker to the left of the cash tray, i have to turn my music up to drown the buzz out off the power supply!! :shock:

Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2010 10:27 pm
by mr lugsy
no effing way have you got an epoch machine j.g ,that is such a surprise ,you really kept that one under your tin fois gras hat.

very common problems on these old epochs as already stated but fear not i'm sure one of our top boy techies might have some surplus to requirement Bang and Olufsens laying about gathering moss.

tick. tock............

Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2010 11:13 pm
by JG
Lol

and yes, you've probably got the cabinet pre Elegance (Apollo?), in fact you definitely would have with Trailblazer. One speaker only, the extra speaker came in with the Elegance.

Posted: Thu Feb 18, 2010 11:36 am
by 6502
Wheres aaammmmuse when you need him,

I know he did have some epoch MK2 psu boards for sale, these reportedly solved the speaker buzz problems and are a lot more reliable,

Also sometimes the lamp board can cause speaker noise, unplug the lamp outputs from the board and see if it get quieter (turn off 1st obviously!!)

Also as mentioned, packing 'might' stop the psu buzz - or a swift kick normally does the trick !!

Posted: Thu Feb 18, 2010 11:38 am
by 6502
There you go


http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/EPOCH-Power-Suppl ... 335a1b4b7d

Bargain at that price, I know aaa was selling at £20 a pop!!

Posted: Fri Feb 19, 2010 2:51 pm
by wildcat
6502 wrote:Wheres aaammmmuse when you need him,

I know he did have some epoch MK2 psu boards for sale, these reportedly solved the speaker buzz problems and are a lot more reliable,

Also sometimes the lamp board can cause speaker noise, unplug the lamp outputs from the board and see if it get quieter (turn off 1st obviously!!)

Also as mentioned, packing 'might' stop the psu buzz - or a swift kick normally does the trick !!
lol a good kick! heh heh.
ive managed to almost dissapate the buzz from the power pack by packing the transfomer and lid, (can hardly hear it now!) 8) and ive moved the speaker inside the machine to the bottom, (ive used a slightly smaller speaker (this shouldn't cause any other problems will it?) so i can't hear the interference now.
the only thing ive got to do now is get another battery for the mpu and fit it (is this difficult to do or straight forward?)