Official Gramps' Memorial Eternal OT Thread

#30,552
#30,552
NorthDallas40 said:
So I changed out the batteries in our iPhones today. Remember I’m an electrical engineer. So I know what happens when you mechanically damage/puncture a lithium ion polymer battery. I’m gonna guess @RavinDave does too. I made damn sure to disconnect all of the electrical connections I could. But it was stuck and I had to pry it out. Took us about 20 minutes to get the smoke out of the house after the smoke alarms went off 😳

My phone still worked after I got it back together and I had it figured out when I did the wife’s tho.
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Good job Dallas!

While watching the Trump rally here, about 20 minutes ago, one of our smoke detectors started chirping!

Those things need new batteries periodically too.
 
#30,555
#30,555
Orangeburst said:
I always had you pegged as an ME, not an EE. You repair 1970's transistor radios?
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I can probably. I have piddled on a few things like that. I’ve recently worked on the control board on all three of my zoned home audio Jamo amps. The power board is solid and a nice design but the control board had to be designed by an intern/co-op student. 🤬 As long as I can read the part numbers or if there is a schematic it’s pretty easy. Won’t mess with tube amps tho. That’s a specialist job and those damn things WILL burn you and can kill you.

I’m a controls systems engineer by experience and we are born from both EE and ME cocoons but it is a multidiscipline field I speak quite a bit of “clank” for a “sparky”.
 
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#30,557
#30,557
RavinDave said:
Imagine if that was a Tesla battery.

There is a reason you can’t ship a large Li battery on passenger aircraft.
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Yep. The wife and mother in law got a first hand example why you get quizzed by the airlines on li-ion batteries when you fly.

Yeah there wasn’t much energy storage in that little battery but damn it went quick. Consumed the whole pack in a handful of seconds.

A Tesla battery is literally a damn bomb. I don’t know how they can adequately protect them in a car.
 
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#30,558
#30,558
NorthDallas40 said:
I can probably. I have piddled on a few things like that. I’ve recently worked on the control board on all three of my zoned home audio Jamo amps. The power board is solid and a nice design but the control board had to be designed by an intern/co-op student. 🤬 As long as I can read the part numbers or if there is a schematic it’s pretty easy. Won’t mess with tube amps tho. That’s a specialist job and those damn things WILL burn you and can kill you.

I’m a controls systems engineer by experience and we are born from both EE and ME cocoons but it is a multidiscipline field I speak quite a bit of “clank” for a “sparky”.
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I was just making a funny from my post in here the other night. I used to tear them K-Mart radios apart as a kid and Mom must of bought be 3-4 of them. I have a couple of old tube guitar amps I occasionally take in. I have this 1962 Gibson amp that used to shock the crap out of me as a kid when I touched the guitar strings. Surprised it did not kill me. When I need tubes, they are sourced from Russia or old Eastern bloc nations.
 
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#30,559
#30,559
Orangeburst said:
I was just making a funny from my post in here the other night. I used to tear them K-Mart radios apart as a kid and Mom must of bought be 3-4 of them. I have a couple of old tube guitar amps I occasionally take in. I have this 1962 Gibson amp that used to shock the crap out of me as a kid when I touched the guitar strings. Surprised it did not kill me. When I need tubes, they are sourced from Russia or old Eastern bloc nations.
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Yep the best tubes still come from Russia. They still actively use them in their RADARs.

Only let somebody with a damn clue touch that Gibson.
 
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#30,560
#30,560
NorthDallas40 said:
Yep the best tubes still come from Russia. They still actively use them in their RADARs.

Only let somebody with a damn clue touch that Gibson.
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I got the shock issue repaired years ago.
Glass tubes are cool though. I like seeing them "Hot". Is the "heat" waste energy, which would imply them being very inefficient? Or is this more of a function of the tube?
 
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#30,561
#30,561
Orangeburst said:
I got the shock issue repaired years ago.
Glass tubes are cool though. I like seeing them "Hot". Is the "heat" waste energy, which would imply them being very inefficient? Or is this more of a function of the tube?
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All heat is waste energy in electronics. Big tube amps consume massive amounts of power in biasing the grids ands it’s all waste heat. The basic tube amp is classified as a Class A amplifier. The most inefficient, but generally speaking the cleanest noise wise also.
 
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#30,562
#30,562
NorthDallas40 said:
All heat is waste energy in electronics. Big tube amps consume massive amounts of power in biasing the grids ands it’s all waste heat. The basic tube amp is classified as a Class A amplifier. The most inefficient, but generally speaking the cleanest noise wise also.
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This begs a question I have always wondered.
Why is it that the dBA output of say 50 watts can vary? I have a 50W Marshall that you cannot stay in the room at level 10, but have had 50W car stereos that sound puny. Is the wattage even an accurate measurement of output power or should it be measured by input amperage?

Edit: Maybe because 50W car stereo is 12 VDC. But even 50W on same 120VAC can vary a lot. I would say a tube amp is louder than a transistor, which kind of makes it seem less efficient.
 
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#30,563
#30,563
Orangeburst said:
This begs a question I have always wondered.
Why is it that the dBA output of say 50 watts can vary? I have a 50W Marshall that you cannot stay in the room at level 10, but have had 50W car stereos that sound puny. Is the wattage even an accurate measurement of output power or should it be measured by input amperage?

Edit: Maybe because 50W car stereo is 12 VDC. But even 50W on same 120VAC can vary a lot.
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Simple... your Marshal is a special amp that clearly goes to 11 😏

The whole system efficiency requires knowing the speaker efficiency to determine the actual conversion to sound pressure AKA loudness.
 
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#30,564
#30,564
NorthDallas40 said:
Simple... your Marshal is a special amp that clearly goes to 11 😏

The whole system efficiency requires knowing the speaker efficiency to determine the actual conversion to sound pressure AKA loudness.
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Dang, never would of pegged it as the speakers. Even at my age, the louder the better.

330px-Spinal_Tap_-_Up_to_Eleven.jpg
 
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#30,565
#30,565
Orangeburst said:
Dang, never would of pegged it as the speakers. Even at my age, the louder the better.

330px-Spinal_Tap_-_Up_to_Eleven.jpg
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Car audio almost always suffers from gain in the speaker enclosure/cabinet. Even your basic monitor speaker is in a nice ported cabinet which provides reinforcement on the sound generation capability of the speaker when in the cabinets tuned frequency response range.

And yeah people do play games on “Watts” usage too, especially on car audio.

My Mach 500 sound system in my cobra is supposed to be 500W but it’s weak sauce compared to either of my Pioneer Elite home audio amps. And the older one that’s hooked onto my Cerwin Vega DX-5s ... well if you put 100W into it you’re going to jail, the people a mile away will be calling the cops.
 
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#30,566
#30,566
NorthDallas40 said:
Car audio almost always suffers from gain in the speaker enclosure/cabinet. Even your basic monitor speaker is in a nice ported cabinet which provides reinforcement on the sound generation capability of the speaker when in the cabinets tuned frequency response range.

And yeah people do play games on “Watts” usage too, especially on car audio.

My Mach 500 sound system in my cobra is supposed to be 500W but it’s weak sauce compared to either of my Pioneer Elite home audio amps. And the older one that’s hooked onto my Cerwin Vega DX-5s ... well if you put 100W into it you’re going to jail, the people a mile away will be calling the cops.
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Exactly. Huge discrepancies. Maybe a better rating would be input output VA, but I am just guessing.
I just saw my amp on eBay going for $2K. Considering I traded an old shotgun and a few Columbia Club $1 for 12 records in 1981, looks like a good investment.

s-l640.jpg
 
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#30,567
#30,567
Orangeburst said:
Exactly. Huge discrepancies. Maybe a better rating would be input output VA, but I am just guessing.
I just saw my amp on eBay going for $2K. Considering I traded an old shotgun and a few Columbia Club $1 for 12 records in 1981, looks like a good investment.

s-l640.jpg
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That was a steal.

On the power and loudness if you get people to use the equivalent electrical units (Watts rms for example) and the correct speaker efficiency (93dB 1W @ 1m for example) then you can do an apples to apples comparison. Electrical power alone isn’t very useful especially in car audio.
 
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#30,568
#30,568
NorthDallas40 said:
That was a steal.

On the power and loudness if you get people to use the equivalent electrical units (Watts rms for example) and the correct speaker efficiency (93dB 1W @ 1m for example) then you can do an apples to apples comparison. Electrical power alone isn’t very useful especially in car audio.
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"Hey man, check out my 100W Sparkomatics, they rock".
Even on a PC power/speaker system I purchased a Logitech 500W 5.1 system and it was not that loud. I ended up blowing a couple of speakers in the first 1-2 weeks and returned and replaced with a 500W Klipsch system that is much louder. Unforunately I blew several speakers out over time as well and replaced. Even took the amp in for a loose connection one time and it is sporadic again as the bass is hard on it. Time for a new system as they are rather cheaply constructed and I got no skilz

Edit: Scratch that. I aint got it no more as I gave to to Goodwill a few months ago after being in garage for past few years.
 
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#30,569
#30,569
Orangeburst said:
"Hey man, check out my 100W Sparkomatics, they rock".
Even on a PC power/speaker system I purchased a Logitech 500W 5.1 system and it was not that loud. I ended up blowing a couple of speakers in the first 1-2 weeks and returned and replaced with a 500W Klipsch system that is much louder. Unforunately I blew several speakers out over time as well and replaced. Even took the amp in for a loose connection one time and it is sporadic again as the bass is hard on it. Time for a new system as they are rather cheaply constructed and I got no skilz

Edit: Scratch that. I aint got it no more as I gave to to Goodwill a few months ago after being in garage for past few years.
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Lol I actually had some Sparko 3- ways in the back of my old Monza in homemade cabinets. They actually sounded decent especially for what I paid for them 😂

I was a poor kid in college. I didn’t buy the Pioneer Elite stuff until after graduation. I’ve got two of them. My old one is a 200W per channel linear Class AB 5.1 system into all Cerwin Vega speakers with the front mains being my DX-5’s. God they still sound so good. My newer one is a 1kW switching Class D 9.1 amp into audio grade Polk Audio vanishing series in wall speakers. This is the home theater. The sub is an active 600Wrms Polk Audio also. They sound good but honestly the Vega speakers just sound so damn good.
 
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#30,570
#30,570
NorthDallas40 said:
Lol I actually had some Sparko 3- ways in the back of my old Monza in homemade cabinets. They actually sounded decent especially for what I paid for them 😂

I was a poor kid in college. I didn’t buy the Pioneer Elite stuff until after graduation. I’ve got two of them. My old one is a 200W per channel linear Class AB 5.1 system into all Cerwin Vega speakers with the front mains being my DX-5’s. God they still sound so good. My newer one is a 1kW switching Class D 9.1 amp into audio grade Polk Audio vanishing series in wall speakers. This is the home theater. The sub is an active 600Wrms Polk Audio also. They sound good but honestly the Vega speakers just sound so damn good.
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Your home systems sound awesome. Real high fidelity. I was just jealous of those colorful Sparkomatic 6x9's as I only had (4) 5 inchers
 
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#30,571
#30,571
Orangeburst said:
Your home systems sound awesome. Real high fidelity. I was just jealous of those colorful Sparkomatic 6x9's as I only had (4) 5 inchers
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I’m a pretty damn lucky guy for sure 👍

Bought the first one 1 year out of college. Blew the amp in a lightning strike about 10 years later and upgraded it to Elite series. Bought the second one when we built the new house in 2014, did home theater in 2016. Had the Vegas since around 1990
 
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