CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[Curt Palme]

... just another sign of the times... I never have been overly fond of Harman Kardon stuff, but it did work well, and was considered a cut above the rest.

I got in a H/K home theater in a box, which kinda surprised me. I haven't followed HK in a while, but didn't think they'd go for the low end market. Anyways, it looked to be a few years old, built in DVD player that the customer said never worked, then he said it died last week completely. He paid $100 for it on CL a while back.

It had the typical blacked out faceplate, a la LG, etc, and came with the remote. Sure enough, it was dead. The thing weighed maybe 8 lbs tops.

I open it up, there was nothing really in the way of an amp section, all chip based, with a big heat sink on top. So I start working on checking caps in the power supply. 90% are way off spec. These caps aren't enclosed, so they're wide open and not exposed to a lot of heat. Worse, the caps showed no sign of leakage or bursting, so I had to pull caps on the board to test them.

What a POS!

[Curt Palme]

... just another sign of the times... I never have been overly fond of Harman Kardon stuff, but it did work well, and was considered a cut above the rest.

I got in a H/K home theater in a box, which kinda surprised me. I haven't followed HK in a while, but didn't think they'd go for the low end market. Anyways, it looked to be a few years old, built in DVD player that the customer said never worked, then he said it died last week completely. He paid $100 for it on CL a while back.

It had the typical blacked out faceplate, a la LG, etc, and came with the remote. Sure enough, it was dead. The thing weighed maybe 8 lbs tops.

I open it up, there was nothing really in the way of an amp section, all chip based, with a big heat sink on top. So I start working on checking caps in the power supply. 90% are way off spec. These caps aren't enclosed, so they're wide open and not exposed to a lot of heat. Worse, the caps showed no sign of leakage or bursting, so I had to pull caps on the board to test them.

What a POS!

[garyfritz]

Hard to believe the owner thinks it's worth having you fix it.

I thought HK was yet another name that had been bought by some cheap-crap Chinese or Korean company, but the wiki article doesn't say anything like that. Apparently Harman International is still located in CT, and was run by Harman until his retirement. They've bought out a whole load of companies including Harman Kardon, JBL, Infinity, Mark Levinson (!), dbx, Crown, AKG, and others.

Guess they got a lot more interested in buying brand names than in producing quality products...

[Curt Palme]

I know, that's why I was surprised. It's all cranked out in China of course, but to see low end crap out of a formerly highish end brand like HK is disappointing.

I know the guy that brought it in thought also that it was high end which is why he paid $100 for it on CL. I sold him a 1990ish Technics for $40 to replace it.

I told the customer that most likely I wouldn't repair it, but I was curious as to the failure, so I spent 1/2 hour looking at it. Changed caps, and it's back to life, but the DVD section is still dead. I'll throw it back on CL for $25..

[Curt Palme]

I know, that's why I was surprised. It's all cranked out in China of course, but to see low end crap out of a formerly highish end brand like HK is disappointing.

I know the guy that brought it in thought also that it was high end which is why he paid $100 for it on CL. I sold him a 1990ish Technics for $40 to replace it.

I told the customer that most likely I wouldn't repair it, but I was curious as to the failure, so I spent 1/2 hour looking at it. Changed caps, and it's back to life, but the DVD section is still dead. I'll throw it back on CL for $25..

[MikeEby]

[dvh99]

remember when denon made some really high end stuff?

[AnalogRocks]

[AnalogRocks]

[Boilermaker]

I remember the true high end of HK was their Tube Citation series in the 1960's. They were one step below the big Mac's and Marantz's and one step above the Dyna's. The best value was that they were available in kit form. I had their smaller power amp which served me well for many years, but in a moment of insanity threw it in the dumpster about 20 years ago?!

Bob

[gjaky]

I have a H/K TU-912 tuner from the mid '80's, and I can assure everyone there is no magic in the box