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Linn Kairn: Dead?

R

RidleyRumpus

Registered User
I have a Linn Kairn that is not working, I wonder if anyone can help.

Firstly, has anyone got any schematics for the Kairn and the Rectangular "Brilliant" PSU?

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When you power on the Kairn the Green LED lights, dimly but does not fade away. The display shows nothing.

I am getting some voltages out of the Brilliant but I am not sure what voltages I should be getting on each wire, anyone got the colour codes for the connector?

The battery is corroded and will need replacing at some point but is outputting 3.6V and that is reaching the back of the board, there does not appear to be any corrosion on the board from the leaking battery.

Anyone got any ideas on what to check next?
 
One more thing.

I also had a dead Karik but I was getting no voltages at all out of that slimline Brilliant PSU (It has obviously been repaired before, badly). So I took out the PSU from the Kairn and put it into the Karik and I now have a working Karik (fingers crossed) which tells me two things.

1) The Kariks PSU is dead and needs to be repaired or replaced. Do any of the Knekt type amps that go cheap have the same PSU?
2) The Kairns issues are not PSU related unless the Karik only uses a few of the voltages from the PSU.
 
Thanks.

Did the slimline brilliant PSU go through some iterations? The pics from that thread show two large capacitors but the one I have here has four.

Anyone got s schematic of the kairn?
 
I’d start with a full recap of the electrolytics and move on from there.

you could try using a dc supply in place of the smps and see which regulator is pulling excessive current.
 
david ellwood said:
I’d start with a full recap of the electrolytics and move on from there.

you could try using a dc supply in place of the smps and see which regulator is pulling excessive current.
Click to expand...

Electrolytics on the main Kairn board or in the PSU?

Thanks, what is the voltages on each line from the Brilliant? ie if I by passed the Brilliant what would I need to provide the Kairn with voltage wise?
 
49061355033_e6a08bd14e_c.jpg
 
White circled is track that seems corroded but is showing continuity. Purple circled is a capacitor that I cannot get a reading out of, in circuit probs?

(I have removed the battery at this point)
 
A lot of people offering the advice are talking about the round brilliant, but he is talking about the slimline brilliant. A kairn will not turn on with the front panel unplugged, so i would check continuity on the front panel near the battery. You may luck out if that is the issue. I bought a intersekt that has an SMPS and I think I am going to try to plug it into my Kairn to see if it works. It is a later version with a shiny surface.

which brings me to two questions:

Is it prudent to recap the SMPS? it is over 20 years old. Previous owner kept it on 24/7 I am recapping the rest of the kairn right now.
Does anyone have a source for the 33KuF 5 pin capacitors?
 
When I did my Kairn I found an exact 5 pin replacement for the 33,000uF capacitor impossible to find and so I settled on a 22,000uF part instead, which is still totally adequate a huge amount of capacitance.

Part number: ALP22A223DD040

Sounded slightly better after the recap.

I've probably still got my originals which are likely still perfectly OK if anyone wants them?
 
CONFIRMED: the intersekt Slimline SMPS works inside the Kairn. You also get a nice black power button to replace the grey one.
 
Where do I measure those?

On the wiring harness coming out of the SLB Back to front:

From Intersekt / From Kairn Original
14.05V / 18.78
-5.1V / -5.1
-14.05V / -18.85
-9.6V / -10.3
10.9V / 10.8
-6.3V / -6.3

It appears they are different afterall! While playing with the Intersekt SMPS for a bit the sound went out and I had to re-cycle the power. I am going to recap the original slimline,
 
Last edited:
I've serviced a Kairn with a blown SMPS. Eventually I put together an external linear supply which worked like magic (not like Majik :p)
 
The audio circuitry runs dual rail 15v so about 19 pre reg sounds right.

with only 14v you’d have been running the amps about 12v unregulated.

it wouldn’t have sounded very good.

Have you done a basic recap including tants on the original smps?
 
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