LA3A troubleshoot, can someone just confirm my diagnosis

Hi all,

One of my LA3A's is exhibiting a no compression symptom. When the unit should be compressing, the meter lamp voltage sags instead, and no compression happens.

I thought it could have been the T4 autotransformer but ruled that out now. It's a problem on my T4B in that unit. Pins 2 & 3 are reading a dead short. I opened the T4B and lo and behold the EL panel is there, which matches the schematic.

So at this point I was confident my problem was in the T4B so I swapped the bad T4B for my other known good T4b. Unit compressed normally.

Am I missing something, or do I just need a new EL panel? I found them here:

http://www.groupdiy.com/index.php?topic=44568.0

Thanks!

sounds right to me.  if you pulled apart your suspect t4b try running the unit in an as dark as possible room i.e. lights off, and see if the el pannel glows at all

I've been able to revive several shorted EL-panels by giving them high-current, low voltage current shocks, which "burns off" the area that is shorted.

Jakob E.