Carver C-19 Reference Tubed Pre-Amp blowing fuses

Hi guys,

I hope somebody can point me in the right direction: I've been enjoying my Polk Audio SRS 3.1TL with my Carver equipment, but today, my C-19 Reference Tube Pre-Amp didn't turn on. I opened it up and noticed the 1/2 Amp fuse was blown. I immediately ran to Radio Shack and bought 4 of those fuses. Drove home like a maniac and installed one of the fuses... a mini fireworks show happened inside the fuse and of course the fuse was blown... the other 3 fuses suffered the same fate... can anybody point me in the right direction as to what could be wrong? I'm not an electrician, but I'm not afraid of open stuff up, use a multi-meter to check resistance, etc and replace components using a soldering gun, I just don't know where to start checking...

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

Your best bet is to send it in for repair.

Hi F1Nut... the shirt on your profile picture says it all about the advice you just gave me! FUNNY! ( I don't mean that in an unrespectfull way, I really thought it was funny. )

We have a couple of techs on the forum, but they may not be on everyday. Give it a couple of days....

Hi F1Nut... the shirt on your profile picture says it all about the advice you just gave me! FUNNY! ( I don't mean that in an unrespectfull way, I really thought it was funny. )

Great way to get help from others right there....

Just to clarify, I didn NOT mean "F1Nut, go buy a vowel and finish the sentence in your shirt", what I meant was, with F1Nut's response of "send it in for repair" it felt like he was telling me to "go buy a vowel and finish the sentence in my shirt"... I just thought the shirt was funny, I didn't mean any disrespect.

Now the advice he gave me might not be such bad advice after all since I really don't know where to start troubleshooting this thing and I know a C-19 is an awesome and rare pre-amp and it would be a shame to fry it by me pocking around in it without knowing what I'm doing. I just want to try a few "safe" things before I bite the bullet and pay to get it fixed.

About the fuses... Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.

I will give you 350.00 for it in it's current state, so long as cosmetics are 8/10 or better... I would love to see Bob's signature on it and resting comfortably in my stack of stuff.

Your best bet is to send it in for repair.

About the only thing that could make the fuses in a preamp blow like that would be a short in the power supply, since it takes high (elevated) B+ supplies for the tubes, in addition to the low-voltage supplies for the op amps. I second F1's recommendation as it is unlikely that there's anything you can do to fix it.

Odysseous, no problem, we're good.

I have to admit I got a huge chuckle when I saw gdb recommend that you join that other site run by that POS liar. What made him think that a service manual or an "engineer" could help you when you don't know the difference between a slo-blow and fast-blow fuse is beyond me. No offense to you, sir.

Rolland at High Tech Audio is another good choice for having your pre amp repaired. I believe his prices are a bit less.

Hi Odysseous,
Nice preamp.

To blow the fuses, it must be a power supply fault. This is unusual since these are extremely reliable units. The tube does not see a very high voltage actually. I think it's around 60 volts or so, compared to the 120 ~ 350 VDC supply voltages common in most tube preamps. The tube is run very lightly, which means it will die due to heater death before cathode wear-out. The heater is the other tube failure point. In other words, tubes in these should last almost forever.

Do not leave it on all the time, or anything else for that matter!

I was an authorized Carver technician in Canada, too bad I lost all my manuals when I sold the place. Otherwise I'd be happy to give you more detailed information.

Sorry for the absence people, health issues have been a bear and still are.

-Chris

Health issues suck ! Hope you are well again very soon !