Lasonic i931BT fried at 240v?

Hi All,

In the excitement of receiving a lasonic for xmas I omitted to take account of the fact that the unit runs on 110v and the uk power supply is 240v. After a pop and a plume of smoke I was left feeling a bit of a Dick. Question is, is the unit save able? I've booked it in to be assessed but I'm wondering if it's a waste of time? Any advice would be appreciated. Could a bespoke repair be done that wouldn't require specific parts from the us? Feeling such an idiot right now....

Open it. I think there is a fuse on the transformer board. Maybe you will get lucky and just have to replace that.

If there was a pop and plume of smoke, I doubt it's just a fuse. At the minimum, the transformer is gone.

I'm a complete amateur, would the death of the transformer mean the death of the unit!?

The transformer can be changed but you will need to find one.

Or maybe you lucked out and just the filter capacitor exploded. Either way, it seems like it's beyond your expertise and a professional tech should look at it to determine the damage.

It's a Bluetooth model, not a vintage Lasonic so my vote goes to throwing it in front of a train & buy another 1...


Cpl

Make a video and post it up here if you decide to do something like that, but bear in mind that the transport police take a very dim view of people throwing boomboxes onto the lines as anything with metallic parts inside can short the live rail and delay the train!

...Or you could take it back under warranty. These have a 230V mains transformer but they are a little on the inexpensive side so if it has been plugged in during the night or at other off peak times, when UK mains can fluctuate as far as 260V in rural areas, then it may not be your fault.

Check your inbox.

Cpl-Chronic said:

It's a Bluetooth model, not a vintage Lasonic so my vote goes to throwing it in front of a train & buy another 1...


Cpl

Click to expand...

Actually that's a really bad idea IMO ...the i931 has a lot of good/compatible parts for the old 931's...the i931 is actually worth more in parts then it is complete so it's worth keeping

Hopefully you can get it fixed, and i'm sure you will...they're actually great boxes

Update. I blew the mains transformer but it's been repaired and a dc adaptor ordered. Thanks for all your help....

Must have been a surge that did for it. 230V power supplies tend to be on their limit on our inconsistent supply. Glad it's all sorted now though.

Jbridges1977 said:

Update. I blew the mains transformer but it's been repaired and a dc adaptor ordered. Thanks for all your help....

Click to expand...

Cool, good news.

Glad you got it fixed, all joking aside. It's always good to hear a box made it back from the brink of disaster....

I'm actually craving a good 975 like a big mac attack!! I've got some evil plans to MOD the ever loving SH!+E!!! out of it for funzies.....

Cpl

That is good news! We all make mistakes in excitement. The seller should have changed the voltage to be safe or warned the buyer about it.

If the seller stayed somewhere surges were less common, such as a Hydroboard area, then they may genuinely not have considered the set's 230V mains TX to be a potential source of trouble. In areas of the UK where the load decreases massively at certain times, then up goes the potential and I have a lovely 1950s KB VHF set with the scars to demonstrate this phenomenon. It arrived from Germany set up for 220V mains and foolishly, I hadn't opened the meter cupboard to check what the figures were at that time or I'd have brought it up on a variac-fed socket and avoided the red face and the smell of selenium! (Think tom cat pish but several million times more intense).

Without the embarrassing bits, we learn far less, even when we're after doing it for 32 years and counting.

The OP (Honestly) stated right from the start that the problem was exposing the BOOMBOX to 220 at the 110v setting. Why keep suggesting that it was a voltage surge that did it in?

Because it's a 230V TX that comes supplied in UK market Lasonics, not a US-spec one, which would contravene the sale of goods act on the basis of fitness for purpose. That, and because it's a very common phenomenon in most areas of the UK and one reason how so many of the Euro-spec (220V, with no provision for an average 250V) devices on eBay here come sold "untested", which is eBayese for "knackered."
We've already seen Si (Northerner)'s example of this sort of thing and the photos in his thread show clearly that the TX is set to 230V.

Ok, if that's the argument that you're going to make, then that's fine and it sounds like a legitimate beef to me if your country has guidelines requiring it. I don't know anything about or the existence of such fitness for purpose, nor know if it's simply that the device has to be capable, not set as such as delivered so I won't argue with you about something I've no knowledge about. But return it based on the merits of that argument and not by suggesting that it was a power surge. Because I'll tell you what, it sounds like the suggestion was to claim it was properly set and a voltage surge fried it. That isn't what happened, and whatever the consequence, I believe honesty is the best policy. Problems aren't always the fault of a seller.

If that was your intention all along, and it was somehow hidden in all those previous posts that I somehow managed to miss, then I apologize. But I didn't see it.