CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

bigsilverdisc · Joined: 19 May 2007 Posts: 60

Hi
I have a 10 year old Sony G70 and i would like to keep it running for as long as i can and i would like to know what parts are likley to die so i can stock up on those parts.
Cheers

rabies_70 · Posted: Sat Jul 12, 2008 7:55 am Post subject:

Buy a whole working chassis if you get the chance. I've seen 'em going for 4-500.00 plus shipping....Tubes??? Good luck. I bought my G70 with 300 hrs for a grand. Set of minty tubes with electronics and c elements attached for like 700 and a parts chassis, boards only for 500 I think. With any luck at all you should be able to find similar good fortune. I hope to keep my machine running for the next 10 years...time will tell.

**Curt Palme** · Posted: Sat Jul 12, 2008 12:37 pm Post subject:

Or buy nothing as almost all of the parts/boards are repairable. I've seen repetitive failures of the same parts on boards, so stocking up on a used board will end up with the same part failing down the road.

While yeah, that's promoting my own services, I am now getting emails such as 'My power supply went bad, I bought a used one on eBay 3 months ago and now it's dead' on a regular basis. To me, it's better off repairing the original board with new parts and possible upgrades to prevent the board from failing again rather than buying a used board that hasn't been modded.

Bitwize · Joined: 09 May 2008 Posts: 83

draganm · Joined: 08 Mar 2006 Posts: 8990 Location: Colorado

PA (high voltage) and DC (convergence) are the most common. The B (input) board is another as well as the occasional E (deflection) and AC/*DC power boards in back. The last ones are the most worrisome because a failutre there can spot-burn the tubes.
Both options mentioned above are good and it all depends on your personal situation. A lot of people don't have the room to store and entire spare chassis so in that case having Curt as an option is priceless.
It can be troublesome at times to diagnose what's wrong with a certain PJ though and if your G70 goes down you will probably be shipping 3 or 4 boards to curt for testing. If I had a G70 in my HT I would really want a spare working chassis. the only boards in tha machine that don't commonly fail is the C-blocks and focus board IMO.

Axatax · Posted: Tue Jul 15, 2008 4:41 pm Post subject:

I have a somewhat different take on this. I would opt to keep on-hand any boards that contain difficult to source (or unavailable parts). There are only a handfull:

At *minimum*, I would stock up on all three Y* boards. While these haven't succumbed to the rash of recent deaths as the equivalent G90 parts, I think the CPUs are made of similar unobtainium. The VPA15 video amps in the C blocks are also very scare, but fortunately don't seem to fail too often. I would keep the B board on hand also, if for no other reason that its complexity.

There doesn't seem to be parts issues with the rest of the set, and as Curt says, they're repairable.

jkruger · Joined: 24 Oct 2007 Posts: 2435 Location: Carlsbad, CA

I would buy spares of the boards that fail and have Curt go over them BEFORE the originals die, doing whatever mods can be done to make them bulletproof. Then when one dies you have no downtime.

ecrabb · Posted: Tue Jul 15, 2008 6:17 pm Post subject:

jkruger, that's an idea I hadn't really considered. One of the things that really concerns me about going the Curt repair route and not having any spares would be the 3, 4, 5 weeks of downtime without my HT. I get pissy when I have to go a week or 10 days without escaping to the theater for a couple of hours. The downtime would SUCK. I mean no disrespect toward Curt, of course - it's the nature of the hardware we use - it takes a good chunk of time to ship, trouble-shoot, repair, and ship again.

Other than the cost of acquiring the parts AND having them gone over/modded/improved by Curt, doing it in advance isn't a bad idea. I could easily rack up more money in buying spares than I already spent on my excellent projector. Of course, that was pure luck - I won the lottery (so to speak) and probably won't have that kind of luck again. Not to mention my wife would murder me in my sleep if I bought another projector.

SC

jkruger · Joined: 24 Oct 2007 Posts: 2435 Location: Carlsbad, CA

That's what I intend to do as soon as I have the boards for the 1209s. I have picked up some parts here and there, but not quite the ones I want yet.

Tom.W · Joined: 09 Mar 2006 Posts: 6635

It's always a good bet to buy an extra quad or two as they are difficult if not impossible to repair and your dead in the water without it.

Zebu Fellenz · Joined: 21 Dec 2006 Posts: 2567

ecrabb · Posted: Tue Jul 15, 2008 7:14 pm Post subject:

Wow, that's cool. I figured with his workload and the number of people here sending broken stuff back to him, that there could be a bit of a backlog. A couple weeks wouldn't be bad... Hell, sometimes I don't make it down to watch a movie for two weeks (and my attitude shows it). Of course, Murphy's Law will be in full force, though. If something is going to break, it will be right before Thanksgiving, Christmas or some other holiday when you had planned to have 5 people over to watch a movie.

SC

Axatax · Posted: Tue Jul 15, 2008 7:37 pm Post subject:

Keep in mind some of these boards are NOT necessarily interchangeable by themselves, as they depend on calibrations set with the trim pots on OTHER boards. The PA board, as I understand, cannot be simply swapped out by itself.

mike calcott · Joined: 18 May 2006 Posts: 307 Location: Australia

I NEED a blue and green tube if anyone has spares

Zebu Fellenz · Joined: 21 Dec 2006 Posts: 2567