Velodyne FSR-18 Repair

RogerD

VIP/Donor
May 23, 2010
3,734
318
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BiggestLittleCity
I just wanted to post about the excellant service I received from the technical support people down at Velodyne.

I purchased a Velodyne FSR-18 back in 1999 and it is a fine subwoofer. The beginning of June I started having problems with it,making noise and oscillating on startup. I called Velodyne and talked to Pete in support and found that they still service my subwoofer. I received instructions on how to remove the servo amplifier from them. It took about 5 minutes,pretty easy and they sent me a RGA form. I filled that out and sent the amplifier to them.

In about 10 days I received it back,installed it,and now it is better then ever,updated and working perfectly,all for the reasonable cost of 275.00

Thank you Velodyne



 

Mark (Basspig) Weiss

Well-Known Member
Aug 3, 2010
682
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940
New Milford, CT
www.basspig.com
I'll bet pretty much what they did was replace all the Chinese defective electrolytic capacitors with new ones. Those seem to be the #1 failure mode for powered subwoofers made in the end of the 90s.
 

qball9703

New Member
Sep 16, 2016
1
0
0
FSR-18 repair

I'll bet pretty much what they did was replace all the Chinese defective electrolytic capacitors with new ones. Those seem to be the #1 failure mode for powered subwoofers made in the end of the 90s.

Hi Mark / All,

The shorter story is that I have a FSR-18 that I think has a servo control circuit (or amp) issue. I am looking for someone, preferably Houston local, that can repair this unit on a sub-component level. ANY help is GREATLY appreciated.

The longer story..... I recently purchased a FSR-18 from a new audio friend knowing that it was not 100% (I thought it would be a simple fix). So... 90-95% of the time this thing works fine and pounds like it should. That other 5-10-% of the time, it sounds like it is near self destruction. Honestly it sounds like a blown voice coil but as I said above, the voice coil is fine and all works as it should 90-95% of the time. I have played around a little bit with the internal connections and am leaning towards an issue with the servo control circuit. I disconnected what I believe is the servo feedback circuit and there was noticeable loss of woofer cone control and much more movement at very low amplifier gain. So, to live with it when I use it, when it "freaks out", I just crank up the volume to a sufficient level so that the woofer gets moving a good bit and essentially beats itself back into compliance. This obviously is not optimal but based on the above info, I am of the opinion that the woofer / voice coil is fine, the amp is "mostly" fine, the servo control circuit / amp are suspect.

I took it to a "certified" Velodyne repair center here in Houston. They kindly took my $108 and proceeded to call me back a few days later informing me that I needed an entirely new plate amp. They told me that they looked around on the internet for parts / info with no luck. I let them know that I wanted the old amp back if they replaced the new one and they seemed to do a bit of crawfishing... stating that they would return it if Velodyne allowed it. I informed them that unless there was a core charge associated with returning my amp to Velodyne, the "bad" amp was mine whether repaired / replaced or not. My Velodyne was reassembled and returned to me unrepaired. Velodyne no longer offers any service or support for this model. I have a bit of difficulty believing that this "certified" repair shop did not already know, before collecting $108 from me, that this model was no longer supported / serviced by Velodyne. $108 lesson for me!!

Sooo... as stated above, any help in bringing this great, but 18 year old, subwoofer back to life, would be GREATLY appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Quint.
 

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