Chameleon Hill 900s

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Moby

www.mobytransformers.com BV.8, Bv.11, Bv.12, T14/1
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As topic says im looking for service manual or schematic for this amp :green:
Any help will be nice, i really need it for repair :sad:
 
Ah, the "Benny" Hill "Comedians"... Roger Quested used them for a long time. They're pretty simple, from memory:

There are two lines of power transistors down each side of the cast aluminium chassis. Check them for shorts collector-emitter. If they pass, look for the power-up soft-start bypass relay. If that's good, check your power supply rails (one big toroid in the middle)

That's about it, I seem to recall they're based around an op-amp and lots of current in the output stage. There might be some DC protection, I neve dealt with that if there is...

Keith
 
Thanks Keith, yes very simple design, but lot of interconnect wires inside :sad: I'm still in the Sherlock job, something with soft start seems to be wrong.... :?: all transistors measures nice....
BTW, i'm not sure what means
Ah, the "Benny" Hill "Comedians"
Are you talking about sound or poor handmade amp :green:
 
Moby, I think you get it, but just in case: 'Benny Hill' was a funny actor on British Television in the 1970's. Eventually, the BBC realised that he was little more than a perverted old man, and they stopped his show. ITV was the only other TV network and they took the show over. By the late 1970's everyone had realised that he was just a dirty old man. Evey show ended the same way, sped-up film of him being chased by lots of partially undressed women and sped-up music to match, while the credits rolled.

What stuns most British people is the fact that so many Americans think Benny Hill is still incredibly funny!!! ...and yes, his old shows are still on TV over here!

A funny person is often called a 'Comedian' so the "Hill Chameleon" became known as the "Benny Hill Comedian"!

(A note to Americans who enjoy the comedy of Benny Hill: The head-shaking astonishment of Brits to the American popularity of Benny Hill is exactly the same response as the American head-shaking astonishment whenever the French popularity of Jerry Lewis is contemplated...)

Soft start... I think there's a big high-power resistor there that gets shorted out by a relay if everything looks good. Check for collector-emitter shorts down both channels PNP and NPN banks... I think that before the relay bypassing the power resistor comes on, there's a quick DC sniff-test on the outputs... but this is from very vague memory and I don't have access to any to check. The only other person that I could ask was Peter Coghlan, who died last week... he and I worked on ours when they misbehaved a couple of times, but I remember us being able to find our way round without a map, though it was a case of "two heads are better than one"!

Keith
 
Thanks Keith, im still measuring... ill be nice to have some service manual, but what to do. :cry:
About Benny, yes i remember him, how not, but i didnt know that people call Chameleon Hill "Benny", so i tough that inside of Chameleon reminds you on Benny's show. :green: To me it looks poor (inside) for 1000 pounds amp., but sounds nice :wink:
 
Hill made some good stuff, some not so good.

For a long time, when H||H S500D amplifiers were failing and sending DC to the loudspeakers, Hill were proudly boasting that they had NEVER had a single amplifier that they'd ever manufactured destroy speakers by sending DC to them.

They couldn't... they all had output transformers in them!!!

Anyhow, eventually, they changed their entire philosophy of manufacture, and in the evolution, the chameleon emerged. It was sneered at because it looked so odd. A "nose" that stuck out at the front, (don't forget to clean the foam filter that lives behind the air intake on the front!) and only 1 rack unit high, but d-e-e-e-e-e-per than any other amplifier made!

The audio circuit was essentially very simple. There was a differential front end, an op-amp gain stage and an enormous high current output buffer. That's about it. Simple and very effective.

It sounded better than anything Hill had ever built. Lighter (just!) and more powerful. Lots of people wouldn't trust it and would not buy it, because it was a Hill. Others thought that it was impossible to have ssuch a lot of power in 1 rack unit. Others thought that it was too deep and touring companies hated that the amplifier 'sagged' down towards the back unless it was supported at the rear... which made quick-changes difficult...

It's a fantastic sounding amplifier. When Roger quested arrived at our studios one day and delivered about eight of them, saying "this is what's going to drive your main monitors" I thought he was finally quite mad. He isn't. He still knows what sounds good. We used Omniphonics amps for the high end, BSS FDS360's for the crossover, and Hill Chameleons for everything else. Quested HD415's have 4x 15" each side... that means that a kick drum panned in the center has 8 x 15" drive units, and four Hill Chameleons all working hard, doing their best to injure you if necessary.

Now that I think about it, perhaps Roger was a little mad... he built some cracking speakers though!!!

Keith
 
Thanks Keith, i agree, nice to hear comments about. This is relly transparent and fast amp, but protection really sucks... My peace of "Benny" already burned one Dynaudio M2 with nice portion of DC, so we can say that Chameleon is now "destroyer" like many of other amps.
Im thinking about adding some nice protection.... :roll:
BTW, if you ask about Brit hummor i better like Rowan Sebastian Atkinson :green:
 
Kieth,

i am so glad that you aprove of MrQ. i had the pleasure of working for him for approx 3 years back in the early days . . . His 2x10's still rule for me, not that i work on them anymore . . .


i can assure you that we had loads of Hill DC3000's that went DC . . . they sounded fab on bottom end( and would deliver down to 1 (YES! 1) ohm. More damping than a formula 1 racing car chassis. Sadly, they used crappy fans that failed often . . .i remember one at battery studios that got SO hot, that i had to wait a whole day to remove it from the rack. A tech there(Geof Atter, perhaps?) had removed it already when i arrived the next day. Unbeknownst to me. he had filled the amp chassis with unbelievably fithly dutch porn . . . Malcolm Hill( a born-again, holier-than-thou Christian) himself met me to analize the offending amp. His 8 year old boy was with us as he removed the lid of the amp. He was SO busy telling me why it couldn't possibly be Hill's fault that the amp had blown up in it's first week, and failed to see his son grabbing a cutting from inside the amp, . . . . . and the eternal words "Daddy, Daddy, what's the lady doing to the donkey?" still ring in my ears . . . .

True Story!

i guess we have probably crossed paths somewhere along the line!



Alll the best,

Andy p
 
Cool! If you catch Malcolm again tell him that i really need f..n service manual. I really like that amp, but he filled box with wires and backside pcb parts :green: :wink:
 
Dear Moby,

i am talking 18 years ago . . . i don't have a schemo. To my recollection it was normally the output transistors that failed - apart from fans! Try Quested monitoring Systems

http://www.quested.com/

they may be able to help you with a schemo. Who knows?

Andy P
 
Keef,

I find it incomprehensible why the British seem to think men in drag is so funny.

I have a pair of small Questeds, and I love them to pieces.
 
Thank Andy :guinness: I was joking about mr Malcolm. Just like Benny does. It's quite simple amp, but as i mentioned looks bit confusing. BTW, if some of you like i can make some gearporn of hill :green:
 
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