Red Goop In Dr. Z & Metro Amps

[Leo_Gnardo]

Back in the day, the Canadian safety organization was the Canadian Standards Association, or CSA. Don't know if it still exists. But pretty much everything sold in the US had stickers for both UL and CSA.

Maybe that was the start of my corn-fusion. At least I knew it wasn't the Confederate States of America. There wasn't much electronic equipment around back then.

[husky]

With regard to the badger goop...Husky can add to this and I'd be curious to hear his opinion, but I was talking with John Kasha a few months ago when degooping a old Rockmod II. John said that the reason for the goop was two fold. One, it hid values. Second it affected the frequency response of the circuit. Whether it does or not I don't know. The pre didn't work before I degooped. Sounded pretty good after though.

What I goop has no chance of failing.
If people would stop posting full schematics on amps there wouldn't be a need to goop !

If you need to goop to have mechanical integrity the design also needs work.

You do need to be careful about what you use though since conductive dies have been used in materials not specifically designed to be used as a conformal coating or "goop"

If the frequency response is critical on the goop being there the design needs work

Our QC is also quite complete. I know what you mean though. I have ungooped siliconed amps where the parts were not even soldered at all !

Anything that would ever need to be serviced in my amps is easy to fix or replace with generic parts, pots, sockets etc. Plus the customer has a lifetime warranty and I have never refused a legit warranty on a second hand amp either.

[husky]

The only ones who want to destroy it are China for their approvals

Don't the insulation tests required by the Low Voltage Directive involve applying kV pulses to all terminals (ie jack and line sockets)?
I guess they may well survive but not be seen to be fit for sale without re-work?
Maybe they could be assigned for demo etc?
Thanks for your insight - Pete

Actually I think that was Korea that required different tests involving them cutting the transformers in half. We wound up just sending them transformers.

At any rate we don't sell the amp we have tested for CE, it is our shop #1 prototype used as a wiring and audio sample. It is also blueprinted and we store sweeps and FFT on the ATS-2 so all amps are compared to that one.

Being such it gets more use than most customers amps ever do and I have never seen an issue. But correct it doesn't leave the building anyway unless as a loaner where it gets further abused

[Structo]

You run a great company John.
Some day I hope to buy a guitar from you.