"François Yves Le Gal" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 19 Mar 2006 18:32:55 -0500, "Robert Morein"
wrote:

I don't believe stereo equipment is very dangerous.

Neither do I. Fact is that some catch fire and that hundreds of lifes
worldwide are lost because of poor product design/component choice/chassis
build. Adding a cheater plug adds a risk. Why take it?

Also, it should be noted that the incidence of fire has no relationship to
the presence of a chassis ground. You can theorize, but I doubt the
statistics break it out.

Poorly grounded products are the #1 cause of electrocutions.

The issue with that equipment is the
circuit board material, typically epoxy paper, and the considerable use
of
plastics.

The issue is IMO poorly choosen components in a **** poor topology.

100V caps, when the rails are 65 ? The caps that failed are higher voltage
than the electrolytic cans. The spec on the caps is adequate. The defect
rate of the supplier is, of course, another issue.

The topology is not "**** poor". It is a very fine sounding amplifier. Some,
including myself, find the treble slightly edgy, if not matched to the right
speakers. But proper matching is important in any application; it's not
peculiar to the Parasound. With the current speakers, which are Acoustat
2+2's, the sound is impeccable. Maybe not the right amp for metal domes. For
that application, I use amps with MOSFET outputs.


The Parasound which did have bypass
cap ignition is completely encased in metal; the boards are FR-4. The
ignition occurred irrespective of the fact that the Parasound, in fact,
does
not have a cheater plug.

I would say that John Curl went over the bridge in his design, with maybe
some creative bean counters getting the lowest spec'ed parts. Or maybe the
components were defective to begin with, something alas more and more
common
when it comes to boutique amps - even from quality-oriented companies such
as Parasound.

Could be. It did take nine years of use for the two caps to fail, and they
did so within months of each other. Perhaps the "weak sisters" have now been
culled.