15 January 2011

Behringer V-Verb Repair

Recently my Behringer V-Verb (REV-2496) broke down. It was my first digital reverb and it actually is quite a nice machine. There is one preset in there called 'Gold Plate' that sounds really good in my opinion. I have used it a lot in the past, but lately it didn't want to switch on anymore. All the lights went on and after 10 minutes or so sometimes it suddenly started working. But then I had some bad spikes on my digital audio path the last days and found out that it was the Behringer causing this so I took it out the rack.

I informed about the possibility to repair it, but then I was told I'd better throw it away and buy a used one back. Well I was not intending to do this, because first of all I hate throwing stuff away and besides that I was not planning on spending money on a new one. So I decided to open it up. I suspected a problem with the power supply since it did work when it was on longer. The spikes suspected me that maybe some capacitors were broken and guess what? I spotted right away that at least 4 capacitors were expanded and there was on two even a substance on it. If you click the picture you can see it up close yourself.

So this morning I went to me local electronics shop and bought some new capacitors. Then I took the power supply out and de-soldered the old capacitors. The new ones were not the exact same size, but luckily they did fit. For the new capacitor I took a bit higher voltage types by the way because I hope they will last longer then. In the picture on the left you can see the power supply with on the left the old capacitor and on the right the new ones. All in all not more than an hour work by the way including taking it apart and reassembling everything.

Then the exciting moment came to try it out. First I applied power to the power supply while it was still disconnected from the other electronics. Well no bang and no smoke came. So far so good ;) Then I connected the power supply back to the rest and switched it on. And happy days :) It worked. It switched on right away. I still have to get it back in the rack and see if those audio spikes are gone, but I have very good hope for that. So another successful repair project :)

11 comments:

Toc77 said...

It seems that power supplies are generally a weak component in many Behringer devices. The one in my DDX3216 digital console showed the same symptoms: "fat" capacitors.

Capacitors also come with temperature specifications. If possible, one should also go up one temperature class. Very good capacitors can endure 10.000 hours at their temperature limit, cheap ones 2.000. This is usually given in the specification.

Synth.nl said...

Hmmm I didn't look at temperature. My local electronics shop has one brand only by the way :)

Anonymous said...

Thank You for the tip! It worked!

Anonymous said...

Hi. Another suggestion to prolong the live of your V-Verb is to put heatsink on the voltage regulator IC9 (LM317 in the corner of the PCB near DSP). This one gets really hot. I have measured about 90°C after having it powered on for 10 minutes with top cover on. I also have DEQ2496 Ultracurve and sometimes it just hung with ERROR 11 message on the screen. After puting heatsinks on voltage regulators that never happened again even during summer temperatures (30°C in the room).

Unknown said...

hi there I have the same problem with my v-verb and wondered if you could give instruction on how to achieve what you have done here , or I am also willing to send this to you for repair if you wish to make a bit of money ?

Cheers

Synth.nl said...

I wrote that in this article. I replace the capacitors. I'm sorry I don't repair stuff for others. No time not even for my own stuff atm.

Anonymous said...

After pausing for a while my Behringer DEQ2496 Equalizer/Analyzer did not boot again. The display and some LED's started flashing but the device did not power up. After a while, one of the capacitors of the device's power supply suddenly exploded.

I was desperately looking for a replacement PSU which was listed for about 54 Euros when I by chance detected your advice. For a set of new capacitors I paid less than 4 Euros and it took me about 30 minutes for getting the old crap out and soldering the new ones.

After I finished I switched on the DEQ2496 and everything worked fine. Thanks a lot, you really saved my day.

Best regards, Chris

DeeClay said...

Thanks for the great recap of your repair. Can you tell me know what replacement capacitors you went with when you replaced yours? Thanks!

Synth.nl said...

Just what they had in stock at the local electronics shop.

Anonymous said...

Hi, was it all 1000uf capacitors or some 470uf too, i have this problem too and found schematics for the V Verb Pro on groupdiy, however the psu section on the schematic makes it look like there are only 5 capacitors however there are clearly 6 removed in the photo? Thanks in advance

Anonymous said...

I opened mine up and noted the power supply capacitors. Below is a list of every capacitor on the power supply board

47uf 400V *
470uf 25v (2x)
1000uf 16v (3x)
470uf 16v (2x)
1uf 50v *
47uf 25v *
10uf 25v (2x) *

Any with a * next to it is not replaced in the photos of this guide. I plan to replace every capacitor even though failure on the tiny caps is so uncommon.As per the suggestion of the guide i will be buying all 25v instead of 25v & 16v.