Though
there are a couple of Zodiacs on the site already, I decided to
include this chassis because the faulty output transformer was caused
by something that is worth taking note of. Belonging to a super guy
named Jean-Paul, he had previously replaced the three octal tube bases
himself, along with a few other components too. The job was done fairly
well & neat.
All finished and back to
life. Now…..the amp was working OK originally until one day it
wasn’t! Diagnosing the faulty output transformer was simple but
why had it blown? Jean-Paul explained that one day he’d connected
another amp head to the speakers in his Selmer Zodiac cab…..to
see what this different amp sounded like. He made a special point of
making sure the Selmer was not powered-up during this experiment
but…….what he didn’t do was unplug the speakers
from the Selmer power amp section itself! This was a bad move!!
Playing an amp back up the secondary winding of an output transformer
produces thousands of volts within the primary winding. This was almost
certainly the cause of the failure! Here is Jean-Paul’s
testimonial e-mail.
"Hi
John. Just wanted to let you know the amp is working great! I
plugged it in last night and was delighted. Today I am going to
crank it up (as it was late last night) and enjoy it for the first time
in ages! Thanks for your hard work.
Kind regards, Jean-Paul"
