Atomic CLR NEO Failure Help

felken

Inspired
What happens when the power amp dies in these? My Gen 1 CLR NEO quit working and the failure mode was a loud pop on power on and then no sound. (I contacted Atomic support but have received no reply, this is the second time it died. They fixed it for $220 the first time and it worked about 4 times afterward and now died again.)

Is that failure mode the power amp and will replacing it with one of these fix it?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/1659828597...25adNtsRS-&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY
 
Those are the amplifiers for the speakers. There are three of them in the CLR (Neo or non-Neo). Two are for the woofer and one for the tweeter. Usually, all three do not fail at the same time. Normally, if one of these fail, you’ll have reduced output from the woofer (or no sound from woofer at all), but sound will still come from the horn or vice-versa.

On the few that I’ve worked on, usually what goes bad is the power supply, and more specifically, one or more capacitors on the power supply board. I believe this is the board that the CLR uses: https://www.hypex.nl/products/smps-family/smps400a180. These are available on eBay also. I’m going by memory here, so the exact model may be different, but I know for a fact it is a Hypex SMPS.

Remove the amp assembly from the speaker cabinet and examine the power supply board (note wire colors and locations for the speaker connections on the amp assembly during removal). The board will be labeled with the model number. Confirm that this is the correct board before ordering. The capacitors can be replaced, but I find it’s economically more feasible to replace the whole board.

Changing the power supply board is easy. A few connectors and 4 screws and you’re in business. There is a jumper wire on the original board that needs to be swapped to the new one (for 110/220V operation), but other than that it’s pretty straightforward. I usually remove the heat sink and amps and apply a new layer of high quality thermal paste while I’m in there, and I also apply a product called Stabilant 22A to all the terminals of the amp modules and connectors for good measure.

Be aware though that there could be something else that’s causing that board to fail, so it may benefit you to let an experienced electronics tech have a look.

Good luck.
 
Last edited:
Yeah what he said ^

I've had both the power supply fail as well as amp modules fail.
This was my first ordeal with power supply failure: https://forum.fractalaudio.com/threads/atomic-clr-problem.100507/page-2#post-1402526

The Gen1 used the SMPS400A400 power supply
https://forum.fractalaudio.com/threads/atomic-clr-problem.100507/page-2#post-1402630

I think the Gen1 units basically just cook themselves over time.

Later ones (MKII?) use an smps400a180:
https://forum.fractalaudio.com/threads/how-to-contact-atomic-amps.187947/#post-2332508
 
Thank you guys for this insight, really helpful. I suspect it is the power supply also cause I don't think anything turns on now and I bet the loudish pop was a cap in the PS.
 
Back
Top Bottom