novinha

I joined the site just to say thank you to stpete cooling. For others reading this I will describe my problem along with some tips on fixing this issue. Firstly, a description. Much like everyone else on this thread, I had a loud humming noise coming from both my speakers, and from the headphones when connected to the pod. Unlike others, I didn't notice a low hum that got progressively louder, the hum was just there one day. The volume of the hum was quite loud, and did not change in volume when I played with the volume knob. Fixing the problem. I'm not going to go too in-depth, mostly because I didn't think about taking pictures while I was fixing it. I will say that my skills at soldering are very crappy. I've never actually soldered anything to a circuit board before, nor have I un-soldered something from a circuit board. With that said, as long as you have a steady hand and have the basics of soldering down, this is easy. Radioshack carries the capacitors you need. They were 1.49 dollars each when I was there (some 20 cents more expensive then other posters claimed, but I also live in Los Angeles). You will need capacitors labeled as 100mF 35V. The m is actually a mu, so it's rated at 100 micro farads. I only saw capacitors that could handle up to 85 celsius, unfortunately. According to other posters it's preferable to get 100mF 35V caps with a 105 celsius rating. Also, being the novice that I am, I bought axial capacitors. This means that there is a wire coming out of both ends of the capacitor. I believe that the stock capacitors are coaxial, i.e. both wires come out of the same end. Apparently, either one will work. For novices like me, it's important to know that capacitors have a positive end and a negative end, as I found out (and should have remembered from my general chemistry class, but didn't). Wiring the capacitors in reverse order can be bad. The circuit board has two holes and one has a plus sign next to it. For axial capacitors the capacitor should have a band of arrows running down it. The arrows point to the negative terminal of the capacitor. By process of elimination, the other end is positive. I've decided to skip explaining how to get the amp out of the sub, because if you can't figure that out, you probably shouldn't be trying to replace the capacitors on it. So, once you've removed the amp you will see two black heat sinks on the main board. the main board has a series of other boards running perpendicular to it. IN BETWEEN these two black heat sinks (I emphasized that so it'll be easier to identify the right area) you will see two capacitors. The next part is removing the capacitors, which I'm sure each person has their own technique. I grabbed a pair of needle nose pliers and grabbed the capacitor with it. On the other end of the board I applied the soldering tip to the one of pins of the capacitor. I heated it for about 10-15 seconds and then bent the capacitor to one side to get the pin free from the board. I twisted it a tiny bit, then did the same to the other pin and the capacitor came free. Rinse and repeat. The next part just involves making sure that you use a desoldering device to remove the old solder so that the new capacitor can easily be placed on the circuit board and then soldering in the new capacitors. Make sure you've got the polarity right, and BAM! All should be well! From start to finish it took me about 30 minutes.