Fire Express speakers hissing

[syph]

Anyone else who owns a Fire Express run into this? The speakers put out a constant, *almost* quiet hiss - it seems to be independent of the volume dials. Just thought I'd see if anyone had an idea before I bug pachislo.com about it. All the connectors seem connected, but I haven't gone through and disco/reco'd em.

[gwarzin]

Lots of pachislos make all kinds of noises. Sum hum, sum hiss, and some are dead quiet. Unless it's loud enough that you can hear it across the room, it's probably normal.

If it's independent of the 3 position volume control you can reduce or even eliminate it. Install L-pads. Then turn up the volume using the 3 position switch. Now lower the volume using the L-pad. Since the L-pad is after the amplifier, the hiss will go down (along with the volume of the sounds produced by the pachislos) as the L-pad is turned down.

[syph]

Sadly (or, not sadly) FE doesn't have a three-position volume control, it has two really cool 0-9 thingies on a circuit board. I'll post a picture tonight. I've got them on "1" now, they will blow out your ears at "5", I've never had the courage to turn it up to "9"....anyway, I'm just unlikely to do L-pad surgery on this one since it's got the really cool, um, thingies.

Anyone with a FE got the hiss? It really ain't so bad...it's just...yeah.

[TANK]

pick up a noise filter at the local radio shack and install it after your transformer. get a good one,the 1.99 ones don't survive 24 vdc. we use them on military vehicals and the 3-5.00 filters survive 24vdc with no problem.

[gwarzin]

Sadly (or, not sadly) FE doesn't have a three-position volume control, it has two really cool 0-9 thingies on a circuit board. I'll post a picture tonight. I've got them on "1" now, they will blow out your ears at "5", I've never had the courage to turn it up to "9"....anyway, I'm just unlikely to do L-pad surgery on this one since it's got the really cool, um, thingies.

Anyone with a FE got the hiss? It really ain't so bad...it's just...yeah.

If it ever gets to the point that the hiss is drivng you crazy, the L-Pad fix will still work. Just set you're volume control at 5 and use the L-pad to bring it back down.

[syph]

If I don't see a jackpot out of that thing this week, I won't have to worry about the hissing because I'm, swear to god, going to throw it in my pool.

[cwstnsko]

Sadly (or, not sadly) FE doesn't have a three-position volume control, it has two really cool 0-9 thingies on a circuit board. I'll post a picture tonight. I've got them on "1" now, they will blow out your ears at "5", I've never had the courage to turn it up to "9"....anyway, I'm just unlikely to do L-pad surgery on this one since it's got the really cool, um, thingies.

Anyone with a FE got the hiss? It really ain't so bad...it's just...yeah.

This is exactly the kind of machine that I like to do this mod on

http://members.cox.net/cwstnsko/Phot...sistor_mod.jpg

It brought the range on my Magic Pulsar to a much more usable level.

It is easy, cheap, easy on the amp and it can be completely and cleanly undone if needed.

The bigger resistor is 10 ohm, the smaller one is 33 ohm. They are both stock items at Radio Shack.

With this mod in place, you don't want to try out setting 9 either, It's only good for a couple watts of power. You could do the same thing with higher wattage resistors, but they're not as easy to find.