X-ACT non funtioning repair attempt

[nando]

I've bought a MF X-ACT which is said to be non-functioning. Only de-emph led is burning. I bought it to be a repair project. It will arrive in de next couple of days.

My thoughts are that I have opened up my other MF stuff so it can't be a big surprise and if the led is working, there is at least power inside the thing. I'll keep you posted.

[PinkFloyd]

Any news Nando?

[nando]

Well, it came to my house and found a lot of family there.

The x-act powers up, the optical sicgal is detected and locked (leds are on) but no sound whatsoever. There is not even a bit of noise. I havn't had time to open it up and hope to have some time this weekend.

I have read about the 32 kHz led blinking fast when there is no input signal and mine does that too.

So any ideas where to look fot the problem? Maybe just a bad soldering on the connectors?

Ah, that the hell, let's open him/her (?) up.

The screws feel like they have not been opened up before. So I'll be the first amature going inside?

No obvious faults on the electrolytics. All Jamicons here but wait! There is one different. It is a purple one (C27 on the board) with "Elite" writen on it. That's not very MF like. Compared to other x-act photo's on the web it seems that there should be a Jamicon  on the C27 as well.

There is quite a lot of messy soldering in here. Even I can do better than that. Big blobs of solder on the topside of the pcb. Hmmmm.

A bit of a shame there is so little info/photos on the web about the x-act. Low resolution dodgy photo's only.

[nando]

I know a little more now.
The x-act locks on the digital signal btr doesn’t give a audio signal.
The output signal is quite strange. The white jack gives 3,1 V and the red gives 7,5V. I can imagine that this is not very nice for my poor litttle x-pre input.

So I think the problem is in the section after the sanyo d/a chip and maybe in the last bit of pcb with some resistors and the little blue block capacitors (forgot the name again).