Can I fix my speakers?

[purestr999]

I couple years ago I bought some pretty expensive Altec Lansing Speakers made for American Voltage, then when I moved to another country and plugged them into 240V accidentally, 😳 there was a pop and then they stopped working.The light on the speaker turns on and you can hear the hiss of the speakers if you put it at max volume, but it simply doesn't have any sound when you plug it into the computer. I opened up the big sub woofer box.
Inside are the:
1. big speaker which I didn't open.
2. a heavy transformer which doesn't have any obvious damage, and it has a non-burnt fuse that has written 250v on it.
3. a silicon board which has all the outlets for speakers on it, and a bunch of capacitors and stuff.
From my inexperienced look, everything seems fine besides one capacitor on the silicon board. Its shell flew off and half the plastic is melted off it.
I can make out 3 lines on the melted plastic: (... will stand for a part that was melted off)
...0+105C -40+1... (im pretty sure that it said (-40+105C)
FHA
...00uF 25V (it actually seems to me that there wasn't any numbers before the 00uF but I can't be sure, is that logical?)

Do you think that replacing this capacitor will fix the speakers?
And is that information enough to get the right capacitor?

 

[PottedMeat]

You probably fried all the components on the board.

At 120V the transformer should output +/-18V to feed the amplifiers. At 240V that doubles to +/-36V. Generally the limit on those little power amplifiers is +/-18V.

 

[Harvey]

For reference, I'm an audio electronic design engineer. You didn't give enough information to diagnose the problem(s), and from your description, I don't think you have enough experience to do so.

If the setup cost enough, you may want to invest in having it evaluated by a competent tech to see if it can be repaired to determine whether the setup can be repaired for less than it would cost to replace it.

 

[Operandi]

You can start replacing things on the board sure but there may be components that are damaged that you can physically see and like Harvey said without the equipment or experience it would be kinda hopeless.

You can try replacing the cap and go from there but "uF" is the capacitance rating of the cap so "..00uF" is definitely missing some information. A cap with a uF of 0 wouldn't be much good.

 

[purestr999]

ok, thanks guys for all your help, I guess I,ll just leave it, much simpler to buy a new one then to try to pay to fix it and maybe it won't work well and all that. By the way, do you think the left and right speakers that are connected to the sub-woofer are also fried? Is it possible (if they even sell just the woofer) to just replace the woofer?

 

[Operandi]

If you want to replace the cap yourself it would be pretty easy and cheap, could be worth a try.

As far as the speakers just hook them up to amp and play something through them, if you get sound they are good.

 

[Harvey]

ok, thanks guys for all your help, I guess I,ll just leave it, much simpler to buy a new one then to try to pay to fix it and maybe it won't work well and all that. By the way, do you think the left and right speakers that are connected to the sub-woofer are also fried? Is it possible (if they even sell just the woofer) to just replace the woofer?

Don't guess at replacing components. If silicon is blown, or you fried any traces, you could spend a bit of money on parts and still not fix the problem. Even with the right parts, if you don't know what you're doing, you could make things worse, including frying any new parts you try to install.

If you like the way the speaker set sounded, and it costs enough to replace it with something as good, ask a local tech for an estimate, and make your choice.

Good luck. 🙂