I just bought an old Hammond M3, European 230V/50Hz model (as I am in Belgium). Today I had it running for 2 hours and all of a sudden it started making a loud hissing sound, almost like a decompression of a steam engine. This was an acoustic sound, not coming from the speaker! And talking about steam, there was a lot of smoke too and a horrible smell (like burned WD-40 or something)! I immediately turned the M3 off and unplugged its power cord. When I took a closer look (I was lucky, because I had the back panel off) I could see the smoke and smell was probably coming from the power transformer or at least something located very close to it (filter caps maybe?).
Now, anyone knows what this could be? Is it indeed a fried power transformer? Then how comes there was this loud hissing sound? Suppose the PT is fried, any thoughts why it did? Failing filter caps? I was just about to replace them in a couple months...
I'm pretty good with a solder iron, mulitmeter, reading schematics, already built a few things, etc... So, with some help I should be able to repaire this M3!
Any advice is most welcome. Thanks!
Now, anyone knows what this could be? Is it indeed a fried power transformer? Then how comes there was this loud hissing sound? Suppose the PT is fried, any thoughts why it did? Failing filter caps? I was just about to replace them in a couple months...
I'm pretty good with a solder iron, mulitmeter, reading schematics, already built a few things, etc... So, with some help I should be able to repaire this M3!
Any advice is most welcome. Thanks!