Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums Modifications Audio Cut a transistor out of my amp. It still works?

I have an Alpine MRV 100, which suddenly quit working last week. It would blow the fuse on the amp the second I put it in.

I took it apart, and messed with it usng a multimeter. I found that all the transsistors on one side of the amp that are bolted to the heatsink, whick attaches to the amp casing, were shorting to ground through the screws that attach them to the heatsink. I unbolted the heatsink from the parts and the casing, and just for sh!ts and giggles, hooked it back up in the car, to see if that was the problem. One transistor immediately went up in smoke, and burst into flames (pretty cool ).

I figured since the amp was now trash, I cut the offending transistor off and hooked it back up just to see what else would possibly happen. The damn thing works, with no noticable volume differences or power output. Sounds the same, works the same. After bolting all the other transistors to the heatsink and putting everything back together, no problems. I ran the amp as hard as I could stand it, and it took the abuse and never even got warm.

My question is, how long will this amp continue to function, and am I risking a fire or something? My power cable is fused 6 inches from the battery, so Im not too worried abbout that.

A friend of mine has a car audio setup in his house (no joke). He said something (transistor,capacitor,something) blew one night but the amp still works. I guess it happens.

You used the "smoke it out" troubleshooting technique. However, you are lucky you did not burn the PC board. Audio power amps usually use output power transistors in parallel. Your amp probably has 3 pairs and you are now running on 2. if you are not driving a low impedance load, it will probably work forever.
If I were in your shoes, I would consider myself lucky and replace the bad device.

i had a Cerwin Amp that did the same thing. we removed a left channel transistor and now its better than the day i got it. its in christinas Car powering a JL12W3. there for the input stage and when it grounded out it gounded everything on the inputs.

Now if i can only figure out this Memphis that i have sitting here AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH