Hello Fellow Amphaulics, Friends, And Supporters Of The World Renowned BBI AMPS: Thank you Luke for this repair video of a marvelous vintage amp. Not a lot of damage Thank God. An HFE gain of 77 = UNREAL. Thank you again, TMP, Unit 22 from N.J.
Now if I could find a 6 meter amp that did 500 watts FM and did SSB as well but built to take FM duty. That would be nice. There is a huge whole in the market for 300 to 500 watt Amps for 2 meters and 6 meter solid state amps. Mostly 6 meter only amps. Great Repair upgrade as always. As far as wire goes would marine DC wire be better than other wire that is not tinned OFC mulit fine stranded wire? There is some good places to get Marine grade wire. Just wondering. 73
I wouldn't trust the fan controller the least bit, let alone any other function that magical "circuit board" provides, simply due to the socketed IC and all capacitors, let alone all the thermal cycles. been there done that, as a teen to young adult in that era it was built. the owner must have taken great care of it, so clean and pristine looking. even if nothing else failed causing the breakdown, thermal cycling alone could back off transistor fasteners allowing over-heating and breakdown. many use self taping screws, which is bad to start with. then if replaced by people over-tightening and mushrooming the heatsink threaded holes(assuming they were countersunk and flat to start with!) most likely not, which raises the transistor up off the heatsink, making thermal conductivity poor and cooking things. really that stuff is/was sold as disposable gear, short to long term. by the mid 1990's pride in craftsmanship/workmanship was all gone and nobody was trained to take the place of elders.
If designed and built right and operated by intelligent people all amps baring water, lightning, fire, and the random parts failure should last many decades with out poping transistors or any other parts. This assumes we are talking about amplifiers built with quality parts and assembled by skilled people! Not every builder is BBi! Not every manufacture was Henry, SGC SG-500 Smart Cube, JRC!!!
