fill35U

Funny story: on Wednesday, the crew from Carverfest Cabin 5 (Travis, Kev, LT, and I) rode into town to scour the pawn shops and thrift stores for gear and music. Largely unsuccessful with the former (nine years of CF have probably picked the vicinity clean), we did score some tunes. We went into one place that had "the best deals in town", and looked promising WRT military surplus. Kev pointed out a rusting rare J10 Jeep pickup outside, and I snapped a pic. I seriously considered buying from their impressive selection of fireworks to add to our speaker roast, but I didn't want to become "the guy that burned down the log cabin". I also already had most of the military manuals in the rack. Several aisles of tools, but most were just cheap flea market junk. No good artillery shells for the collection. I was going go ask about the SAPI plates in a carrier, but there was no price tag. I pondered the irony of possibly dying later from having a blown woofer penetrating my sternum... So what did our brave band of audio warriors end up getting at the big military surplus/redneck supply store? I bought a used Liza Minnelli CD.

Welcome to theCarversite, armstrong! I like the PM-1.5a myself, a little less refined than the PM-1200, but with the anthracite. Please show us some pics, we love pics.

listening to local commercial radio on the factory stereo in a 2004 Nissan Sentra with only the right channel working, with my ears popping as I drive up and down the foothills of the Appalachians. Oh joy.

"WE ARE ALL NUTS... If we weren't we'd be collecting something cheap like bottle caps." - Zumbini, in THIS POST

Interesting to replace mostly non-electrolytics with $100+ of boutique film caps, but leave all the carbon composition resistors. But I guess the proof's in the pudding, whatever sounds better!

Oh wow, that schematic in the AV-806x manual *is* the page from the Marantz MA-500 manual! The MA-500 manual is much more legible than our copy, and fills in a lot of blanks elsewhere. They really complicated setting the bias, do they expect you to use a stopwatch? Bob was long gone by the time the AV-806x came out. Who knows who licensed from who? It's a pretty conventional design, after you take away all the specialized chips that run everything. It certainly didn't have anything to do with the AV-405 of the year before, nor the AV-705x of the year after.

FIFY! Thanks, Peck! $390 for all six slave modules, same seller has slaves singly for $75 each. What's this about "Marantz MA-500"? Ah! It's a single one of the *same* AV-806x slave modules in a little monoblock chassis! Maybe a service manual for the MA-500 would help? Might explain why the module schematic in the Carver service manual looks like it's from a completely different manual...

Thinking about it, you might want to put a 33R 1W metal film resistor in series with the +15V trigger from the "acting master" module. Before it gets to the circuit where the module triggers itself! That'll limit fault current in case of serious problem, and hopefully blow open if the fault continues for more than a few seconds. At 20mA per module (including the "acting master"), it shouldn't amount to more than a 4V drop. I'd expect that 11V would still be sufficient, and that signalling each module wouldn't take more than 20mA. Obviously, you want to try this scheme on just the "new master" alone first, to see if it can turn itself on. Then add modules one at a time, monitoring the +15V trigger for consistent but not excessive droop. You could also pull down that +15V trigger with various resistances (or use a variable power supply) to find out what minimum voltage is acceptable to turn the slaves on and keep them on.

The schematics we have aren't the easiest to read, at least with my software. And it looks to me like they're incomplete in regards to the details of how the slave modules are different and how they link together. However, based on what I can make out, and from photos of the interior: I *guess* that you could run her with no master module, or with a slave substituted for the master, if you could generate the "power on" signal to send to the slaves. I'm pretty sure that signal is generated in the master, and sent to all the slaves at the same time via the grey ribbon cable at the front of the amp boards. That same signal is what makes the "power on" (green) LED light, and is sent to the LED board by gray ribbon cable. The LED board gets a 3-conductor ribbon, since it needs to show "standby" status as well(LED lights red). But the ribbon from the master to all the slaves is 2-conductor. I think that 2-conductor cable carries +15V on Pin 1 of the connector (outside pin), and in "power on" it makes Pin 2(middle pin) go to 0V, lighting the LED and telling the slaves to turn on. BTW "turn on" may just involve input muting and output relays, the amp sections probably stay idling warm in "standby". Each slave module should generate its own regulated +15V supply as the master does. So it should be easy to pick one slave module and make it act like a master: tie the +15V from the regulator to Pin 1, and tie Pin 2 to ground. If you're lucky, they used the same boards for masters and slaves, just populated them accordingly, so you'll have lots of free pads or jumper points to play with. That's my best guess! It would be nice to have a working amp to examine to know for sure. Good luck!