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Schiit Freya damage by giving it an electric static discharge on the volume knob.

Anyone had his Schiit Freya Tube Preamp "zapped" by carpet electricity build-up while touching the metal volume knob? just to find out the your device lost 70% of its original volume out?
Today, the wife while trying to lower the volume on my music she accidentally gave a carpet electric discharge to the knob and the music stopped, but the unit remained off, so I turned it off, and back on, just to find out that the volume knob, did not make any relay noise until you start getting to the 3 0-clock position, then little by little the music starts playing back but when you get to the maximum, the output it only about 30% of it,
I believe the volume relay board got damaged up to some point, but since I am not familiar with this type of "volume technology", I have no idea the extent of the damage. Wondering if any Freya users there heard of this issue before, how to fix it, and how to prevent this from happening in the future.
128x128centaurojz
oldhvymec
5,101 posts
 
OP, did you just try to unplug it, wait and plug it back in?

Cost nothing. I would think a valve went bad, part of a gain stage. Do the valves light up? 

IF you turn off the valve stage does the volume go UP? I think that will solve that TS part. If it's low when on valves, and higher without, pointing to the valve portion. Valve, or auto bias circuit, something like that..

Good luck..
mikem
260 posts
 
There are different relays to control the volume depending on which level you want. One of those relays might have been fried by the static zap.. 
I zapped my Yggdrasil dac and it shut down completely..  it did power up and all is well.. but I try to ground myself first to the rack before changing any controls..  The remote is a great way to no zap the preamp.. 
dadork
633 posts
 
I've recently had a similar experience when adjusting sub gain. Luckily no damage! What can be done to stop this from happening other than moving from cold climate?
russ69's avatar
russ69
3,543 posts
 
"...What can be done to stop this from happening other than moving from cold climate? ..."

I ground myself by touching the stereo rack first before I touch any equipment. 
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,965 posts
 
The equipment should be static discharge protected... not saying that it is, but should be (its just a resistor and a capacitor that is needed to protect it; its not rocket science....). Its not like this sort of thing hasn't been known about for a very long time. I used to work at the Allied Radio Shack service department back in the 1970s and we had to retrofit equipment that was getting damaged in this way.


At any rate, if rebooting it (if it has a computer) doesn't do the trick it will need to go back for service and under warranty if the warranty time has not expired (IOW its not acceptable that the damage due to static discharge isn't covered).
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