Topic: What the F**K Happened to my UA-5 last night???

[terrapinj]

Last night I was taping Earl Chinna Smith and Friends, all acoustic, really small amazing show in the hills in Malibu. Get to meet Chinna before hand and get the ok to tape. I rolled taped for two opening bands each about 20/25 min long. Then Chinna comes on and about half way into the set I walk up to get a drink and come back to check my levels...NONE!. So I check to make sure my optical cable hasn't come loose, still no signal there or on my SVU-2 (RCA out of UA-5). I look at the UA-5 and the phantom light is off, so I figure I hit it by accident, nope. I couldn't get the phantom light to come on so I turned the UA-5 off and tried my other battery even though I knew the current one was fully charged before starting (9.6v 3300mah RC bat) So i turn the UA-5 back on, it powers on but the monitor light which always comes on didn't come on and I again couldn't get the phantom to come on. So I tried turning it off, uplugging and waiting a minute or so, made about 12-15 attempts. Twice I was able to get the phantom on, only for about 3 secs then the levels would die and the phantom light would turn off. Double checked my main battery this morning, still pushing about 9.35V which should be plenty to power the UA-5. Real quick before work I tried to power up without mics attached and everything powered on fine.

Sp C4s > SegueDogstars > DIY D-mod UA-5 > JB3 (optical) powered by 9.6v 3300mah rc batteries and a BB VR-Jbox.

Anyone had anything like this happen or have any idea what the hell happened Also, does the JB3 stop recording when it doesn't have an optical signal? Any help is grealt appreciated, I am really bummed right now that I didn't get the whole show and really hope I don't need a new pre.

[terrapinj]

Is it an Oade mod?

nope modded by myself.

[terrapinj]

Sorry, saw that in your lineage after I posted, I was going to suggest sending it in to Doug.
I have never experienced anything remotely close to what you are describing with either of my UA5s.

I would suggest getting a new cable from battery > ua5.  Cabling is the culprit 3/4 of the time.

yeah I was hoping that Marc would see the post and perhaps chime in with a suggestion, the VRbox is only a month or so old, I wouldn't think it would be his cables, but I guess you never know. thanks for the input

[BJ]

test it at home with the walwart..see if you can get phantom that way..if not...its not the cables...

[Craig T]

had something similar happen (unit appears on, but no phantom or signal) - it was the battery.  below a certain voltage, the unit will power up, but no phantom therefore no signal.

try a different battery and the AC adaptor and report back.

[macroint]

Last night I was taping Earl Chinna Smith and Friends,

+T for trying to tape Earl Chinna Smith...he killed when he played with Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers!

[bhtoque]

had something similar happen (unit appears on, but no phantom or signal) - it was the battery.  below a certain voltage, the unit will power up, but no phantom therefore no signal.

try a different battery and the AC adaptor and report back.

Same problem here. As voltage drops out of range, the digi signal dies, then phantom.

Can't say why if the batt was still good though.

JAson

[terrapinj]

thanks for the feedback, gonna try AC power tonight or tomorrow morning, i'm really thrown off because the one battery still shows more than enough voltage to run the UA-5. i'll report once I run AC

+Ts all around

[bhtoque]

thanks for the feedback, gonna try AC power tonight or tomorrow morning, i'm really thrown off because the one battery still shows more than enough voltage to run the UA-5. i'll report once I run AC

+Ts all around

I could be wrong, but I think you need to test the voltage under load, and that it will show higher if you just measure the disconnected battery.

Not sure how you tested, but I remember a thread about it somewhere.

JAson

[terrapinj]

UPDATE

plugged the ua-5 up to the wall-wart everything seems to run fine, so I switched over the the battery I was using when the shit went down..seemed to run fine for about 5 minutes or so then I glanced down and there was no optical signal, but the phantom light was still on, I though WTF maybe the solder point came loose...opened it up solder point is holding strong. so I hooked it back up and switch my optical cable, this time no opti signal, no phantom, switched over to the wallwart, everything works fine, so it's either the battery or my VR-Box, I'm leaning heavily towards the battery, I read the current coming through the VR-Box ~4.5V, unplugged the battery from the box and read the current directly ~7.2V and then starting slowly climbing towards 7.5V. I have my other battery charging so I can test a fully charged battery and see what is up, keeping my fingers crossed its just the battery.

[F.O.Bean]

you have 7.2v batts are they new? if so, keep cycling them, i had to cy cycles or so before they would run my v3/jb3 setup reliably thru the vrbox

[terrapinj]

you have 7.2v batts are they new? if so, keep cycling them, i had to cy cycles or so before they would run my v3/jb3 setup reliably thru the vrbox

9.6V - only about 3/4 months old, theyy've been cycled maybe 5-7 times completely

[dklein]

Everything you've described says it's the battery.  It worked the next day because you gave it a rest...I'll bet it wouldn't have lasted for more than 10 minutes if you let it run.  Measuring voltage without a load doesn't tell you much when the battery is nearly dead.  You can try reading the voltage off the battery while it's running the UA-5.

Each cell will start at 1.4v and fizzle out around 1.0 volts.  A fully charged 9.6v pack (8 cells) will measure 8 x 1.4 = 11.2v  and at the end of the cycle it'll be 8 volts (under load).

Also, Nimh batteries will self-discharge significantly over time so if it's been in storage for a month, it might not even work without a fresh charge.

If you're using one battery for the UA-5 and JB3 you shouldn't expect too many hours of life (maybe 3?)

[F.O.Bean]

whats the ua5's run on voltage wise

[terrapinj]

whats the ua5's run on voltage wise

I believe its reccommended for 9V or more, but Im pretty sure people have run it on 7.2 without issues.

It is definately the battery, I ran it again today until the ua-5 wouldn't power on at all, to try to drain it as much as possible, then I hooked it up to the charger and immediatley the green light on my charger came on saying it was done charging, really odd because the battery awas sitting around for MAYBE 10 days since it had been charged last, never had any issues with it before, im gonna see if I can exchange it with the company I bought it from on ebay, luckily I just bought 2 more from Kresby on here so I have backups on the way. i tried the other battery, freshly charged just to make sure it wasn't an issue with the VR-box and it worked fine for 15-20 min which is much longer than the other one would run it so hoping it was just the battery at this point.

thanks for all the feedback guys, if i learn anything more I'll be sure to post

 +Ts for all