A Warning for Owners of Furman IT Refernence 20i


A Warning to anyone who owns a Furman IT Reference 20i for power filtering-
Do Not Leave the unit unattended while powered on. A few weeks ago, I smelled the very acrid smell of melting plastic and circuit board coming from my stereo. Long story short, my Furman IT Reference was the source and one of the circuit boards that was designed to prevent ‘current inrush’ self destructed. 
Thankfully, I was close by and was able to quickly unplug the unit or there was a very serious chance of fire! Since then I have tried, without any success, to have the unit repaired, but have gotten nowhere with Furman (now part of Nortek). I have tried sending in multiple requests for service. I’ve tried calling, only to end up in ‘press 1 for, press 2, purgatory..‘. When I have managed to get someone on the line, they referred me to their ‘dealer network’ for repairs. I contacted one of the dealers and they told me that only Furman is allowed to perform their own repairs. Call back Nortek and they won’t sell parts and they only use their dealers for repairs. Lather, Rinse, repeat. For $5k I’d expected better. The only good news is that I’m a very experienced service person for research instrumentation and I was able to identify the electrical component that failed (Ametek Thermistor SL22). Furman undersized the thermistor in their inrush circuit and thereby started the board to self destruct. The part is very cheap and I’m hoping I can still salvage the circuit board. But BEWARE! Had I not been nearby, it could have been much much worse!!!

mbachemist

Just wow. I appreciate the accurate description of what has occurred, an NO, few of us here would find your explanation boring. In fact, I am always interested in the guts of a unit. Interesting to note the size of the transformer in particular. It's one thing to get the correct sized thermistor to do the job but running a line over the top of it speaks for itself. Please do keep us informed as things hopefully progress. 

Owned a 15i Elite for years and it functioned flawlessly.  Replaced with Decware ZLC which smoked (figuratively) it completely.  The ZLC made everything much quieter and more dynamic.  So, in a weird way, perhaps the smoked unit did you a favor and you can move on to a better unit.  Cheers