Site Links
Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Categories
Hafler DH200
I finally got my ass in gear and actually removed this thing from the box it was shipped to me in......6 years ago. I know, right! I bought it off eBay with intention of going through it and using it, but it just never happened. Till now. I bought a recap kit back then, so I started on the amplifier modules. I guess who ever built this one had the mylar kit as the original used the ceramic disks. I didn't have to replace those, I just did the electrolytics. I ordered new PS caps and installed those. I didn't upsize those as this thing will never be running all out, it's going in the living room for TV/music duty. The spec'd 10Kuf will be fine.
I replaced the RCA Jack's with some nice goldies and ran shielded wire to the boards. I replaced the 10uf electrolytic input caps with poly units. These amps were usually described as light on bass. After running the ESR numbers on the original caps, I see why. At 120Hz the electrolytics were 15 ohms!!! The poly's 2.5 ohm, and bested them up top, too.
Last thing was the power cord. It had a standard 2 wire "lamp cord". I ditched that in favor of an IEC standard plug. Little Dremel action took care of that.
It sounds great๐๐ป Cant say its better or worse than anything else, but there's no noticable bad things happening. It definitely has plenty of bass powers. I popped the speaker protection fuses, that's good right? ๐ It had 2A in it, supposed to be 3-5A. I put the 3's in it.
How about some pics?
Comments
These are the original pics before I took it apart. Good things to have, ehh?
...and the handy work.
In it's new home....
Love those groovy curvy pcb traces like my 8 year old son would do with his crayons lol
So what's the rule of thumb when recapping an older amp? I have two 20 yr old Acurus and one has definitely been ran hard powering an Apogee planar and Carver Amazings.
My Hafler could use a IEC standard plug. Thanks for the tip.
I'm not an expert, but should you check and adjust DC bias when you are working on an amp?
I did on this one. Right channel was 240, left was 310. It calls for 250ma, I ended up around 260ma.
Thanks for sharing. My Dyna400 uses those same T0-39 package heatsinks.
I've got a dh 200 here. One speaker became unconnected. It didn't short but running with only one channel blew the channel that wasn't connected. Not sure why that would blow it. That was about ten years ago,was thinking of getting it repaired.Maybe I'll get the polys upgraded,what did you use in it.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Polypropylene-Film-Capacitors-1500pF-to-10uF-100V-to-1600V-Lot-of-3-/164226230773?_trksid=p2349624.m46890.l49292
Thanks for the info, can I ask you what you meant when you said" bested em up top " I' ve actually 220 here.
measured better than them at higher frequencies.
I've been using some of the cheap Panasonic ecq film caps for crossovers. It's decibel's fault. No love for wima?
Wima is good, cheap, popular. Watch where you stick your soldering iron though, the casings melt like butter.
How do you like the cheap Panasonics? The flame retardant epoxy coating won't care so much if you touch it with your soldering iron, so they have that going for them at the very least
So far, only used the pannys on a filter for a PicoNeo build. Performance/price/size wise, it was a great fit. If it wasn't such a pita to disassemble the Orgone crossover, I'd swap its red Audiophiler caps for panny and/or wima to see if I can hear a difference. Say what you want dcibel, but I much prefer the wima, or Jantzen, over the Audiophilers in the 4s tube preamp, but I'm always willing to try something new, especially if it's a bargain.
The weather is turning into Spring here and I need to get back to building ... but ... you know ... the fish are also biting, so ...
I can't wait to build some new things, I've got some really cool projects planned. But also needed to cleanup 17 bags of leaves from the yard, trim the trees, next weekend were supposed to finally get delivery of appliances that were ordered at Xmas. It never ends, but the motivation is there so I'll find some time eventually.
Anyway, the good thing about the "industrial" type caps is that the low cost doesn't necessarily mean low quality, but can be lower cost vs your standard audio cap because their manufactured in much higher volumes. Motor run caps are great for crossovers if you find the right values.