Dry joints on Hartke

[arthurhenry]

Previous experience of dry joint problems has given me the opinion that once they've been repaired, they will fail again sooner of later. My 15 year old Hartke HA3500 failed for the second time, about a year after the initial repair. I have replaced the amp, but should I have it repaired to keep as a spare/use at home, or chuck it/sell for spares?

[icastle]

It really depends on how thorough the repair was.

I had an HA3000 with dry joints (it has been a Hartke quality issue on several occasions) and spent several hours desoldering and resoldering every joint.

It did another two years of live use before I retired it to 'backup' amp.

It got used a few weeks ago for the first time in about 18 months and it worked fine.

[KiOgon]

Dry joints can happen because the 'leg/s' of a component is made of inferior material or not tinned properly. If you can't get a good solder flow between the PCB & the component - replace it instead of just resoldering.

[Len_derby]

I had a couple of dry joints re-soldered on my HA2000 about 3 years ago. Since then I've used it almost every week for rehearsal or live and it's been 100% reliable.

[Phil Starr]

I've had problems with my 3500. The problem seems to be mainly with all the smoothing caps in the power supply that are not securely mounted and heavy enough to move when the amp is carried around. I bought a complete new set of caps and meant to replace them and mount them properly at the same time, but of course since then the amp has behaved perfectly and I can't be troubled to open it all up again.