Had a chat with an old TV repair guy that made me rethink my whole approach

Met this guy at a swap meet last Saturday, must have been 70 something. He was selling old CRT parts and we got to talking. I was bragging about my fancy hot air station and how I can swap out BGA chips no problem. He just looked at me and said "you fix with your eyes, I fix with my ears." At first I thought it was just old man talk. But then I got home and had a power supply that was buzzing real faint. I was about to start pulling caps and measuring everything. Instead I just sat there and listened for like 5 minutes. Heard the faintest whine from a transformer. Found a cracked solder joint on its pin that I would have missed visually for hours. Made me wonder how much time I waste looking for problems I could hear first. Any of you guys still troubleshoot by sound or am I just late to the party?

2 comments

2 Comments

kim69313d ago

That line about fixing with your ears instead of your eyes hit me hard. I had a monitor once that would randomly shut off after an hour, and after swapping half the caps I finally just sat there and listened. Heard a tiny crackling from the flyback transformer, turned out the coating had a hairline crack arcing to the core. Saved me like three more hours of shotgun troubleshooting. Pro tip: get yourself a mechanic's stethoscope with the metal rod, it turns the whole board into a listening device and you can pinpoint exactly where the noise is coming from.

grace_allen13d ago

Wait, are we really acting like this is some kind of ancient wizardry now? I mean yeah, listening is a good trick when you've already gone down the rabbit hole, but let's not pretend it's a substitute for knowing what you're doing. I've had plenty of stuff crackle and pop that was just a loose connector or a bad solder joint, not some flyback transformer conspiracy. Honestly, half the time the noise is just your own blood pressure rising from frustration.