Channel drop out on new amp

Refefer

Well, my newly acquired creek audio integrated has a bad habit of dropping the left channel occasionally. Now, interestingly, turning the integrated off then on again a couple of times usually fixes it temporarily, but it will typically go away again after an unknown amount of time.

Is this indicative of the shipper perhaps dropping the amplifier and jarring something loose? Bad solder joint? Any ideas what I can do to try to debug this further?

organ

Sorry to hear you're having problems.
Is it still under warranty?
Sounds like you purchased the unit used. If so, you can contact the seller and you guys might be able to work something out with regards to repairs. It's very difficult to pin point the source of the problem. It could be caused by a lot of things.

If you know any good technicians, they should be able to find the problem. If you go this route, get an estimate first. Bad techies like to charge an arm and a leg for simple fixes.

But I'd suggest contacting Creek first. You never know, there may be a repair center nearby.

Refefer

Yep, off of Agon, unfortunately. The seller claims that the unit was fine pre-shipping, so my guess is it was dropped during shipping. Unfortunately, the sellar didn't insure it as per-request, so I'm taking it up with Audiogon as a breach of contract.

I sent an email to Creek and hopefully they can provide some avenue for repair. There are a couple of shops in the area which fix higher end audio gear and I'm waiting on quotes from them.

It's a real shame because this beauty sounds great when working correctly. Fingers crossed that it's a simple, cheap fix.

organ

Good to hear you're reporting it to AG. When a buyer requests to have his item insured, the seller should do it. If he doesn't want to, he should have given you a reason why instead of shipping it right away. I mean, the stuff we play with ain't table radios.
Hope you get this issue resolved quickly.

Keep us posted.

munk

I've a suspicious mind. The fact the seller didn't want it insured sends up a red flag to me. Then when the problem with the channel surfaced the shipping company wouldn't have wanted to take the hit.

Well, there's nothing to be done about other than the steps you're taking. Moving forward is always a good plan- you can't change what has happened anyway. I even debated whether or not I should post this and potentially aggravate Refefer. But if it had been me, I'd want to know all the possibilities/ probabilities.

fishbones

First, I would do some wire wiggling....just to make sure it's not a wire going into, or coming out of unit. This might also locate the problem with the unit (bad rca jack connection), if there is one, or might locate a problem wire that has developed?

I had a channel cutting in and out on me when I was moving some wires around once, and thought oh boy, my equipment has a bad jack somewhere - it actually ended up being a faulty soldering joint inside the wire -- and it was brand new wire.

Not saying your equipment is faulty that you had in there already, just worth a check before you go to battle against the guy. (Though, I agree that was pretty **** that he didn't do what you requested)

Good luck!
Troy

Refefer

I received a (very British "Dear Sir,") response from Creek who shed some light on what the culprit was: Ribbon cables. Interestingly, they use non-soldered ribbon cables to connect the different pcb boards together and are apparently notorious for loosening up over time. While I had made sure they were tight before, they suggested slightly bending the pins inside to ensure a tighter connection.

At their suggestion, re-seating them a couple times somewhat fixes the problem, though very occasionally there is a crackling in one of the speakers, but I am convinced it's a design flaw in the creek rather than resulting from the owner or shipping. Some more research found that some of the more ambitious owners have paid to have the ribbon cables replaced with individually soldered wires resulting in both increased reliability and sonic properties, so depending on how often the lingering effects last, I might pursue that.

I thought the seller handled the mediation process rather well. To his credit, he was willing to accept my terms (pay price of fix or refund it). On the other hand, he completely missed the boat on my dispute with shipping and kept claiming that FedEx doesn't provide opportunity to insure shipped items. While that might be true, I did request UPS insured ground and still think the filed dispute had merit.

Luckily, however, the fix was easy and costless. Regardless, hopefully the seller has learned a lesson that when a buyer wants it shipped a certain, and he agrees, he better hold up to his end of the bargain. Organ said it right: these aren't table radios we're talking about, you know?

Refefer

As an aside, I found Creek Audio to be quite nice when helping debug the problem. They admitted the design flaw and mentioned they had fixed it in subsequent models. Even knowing I wasn't the original owner, they were quite professional and accessible.

fishbones

Refefer...not to keep diggin' on the guy, but so you know for future reference - FedEx definitely offers insurance (I just shipped a subwoofer 3 days ago FedEx, and insured it for $495). If an employee at FedEx was wrong, or misunderstood something, who knows, but he still should have waited to speak with you, if that was the case.

On the unit though, in the sellers defense, it is possible that the problem developed/increased with being bounced around during shipping (not necessarliy dropped), or being wedged in packaging tightly, and the unit was fine before it shipped?

Glad you're getting it resolved...
Troy

Refefer

fishbones wrote: »

Refefer...not to keep diggin' on the guy, but so you know for future reference - FedEx definitely offers insurance (I just shipped a subwoofer 3 days ago FedEx, and insured it for $495). If an employee at FedEx was wrong, or misunderstood something, who knows, but he still should have waited to speak with you, if that was the case.

On the unit though, in the sellers defense, it is possible that the problem developed/increased with being bounced around during shipping (not necessarliy dropped), or being wedged in packaging tightly, and the unit was fine before it shipped?

Glad you're getting it resolved...
Troy

Definitely good to know :mad:

I agree; it could have happened regardless of the shipping method. Still, what if the problem had been caused by a broken solder joint or something that required a less trivial fix? That becomes an out of pocket expense for me then since I have no recourse with the shipping company.

Oh well, all's well that ends well I suppose.

organ

That's good to hear. Try cleaning the connections. That's probably causing the crackling you hear once in a while.