My friend’s 5.1 amplifier produced the same phenomena like in this forum described.
After disassembling the main box it was trivial that we face with the very same problem 🙂 However I would state a correction here: the PCB trace corrosion (open circuit) is cause by the low quality capacitor (450V 33uF – CapXon) electrolyte leakage, not due to the glue (unlike described in the Creative forum post)
I couldn’t find this problem by myself, because it would be incredibly time consuming 🙂 So thanks a lot for the Creative forum description guys! 😉
The PCB trace was corroded right below the 33uF capacitor, so I had to disassemble it to inspect the problem. Tricky ain’t? 😀
The repairing consisted of a short wire section between the buffer cap and the 2Mohm resistor. Also I’ve replaced the capacitor because it’s obviously damaged.
Finally the amplifier works great, it was switched on immediately. The phenomena was that it doesn’t want to turn on, just after some mins ~ hours. And after turning alive many times it just turned of again accidentally… There could be some problem around the other poor quality capacitors, I think of checking them too for this corrosion. The problem that all the through hole components are glued to the PCB (by hot glue gun) so replacing them is a nightmare 😛
Hack the gadgets :) 