Flash malfunction and almost disaster

Posted by: davidf on 23 March 2017

I have all olive system and Focal Electra 1038 be speakers.  Have Flash remote - updated to latest chip some years ago. Has been working fine until last night. Screen became darker and writing was jumbled.  Put new batteries in and all seemed good- until 1 minute later when volume up setting was stuck in up position and my 52 volume quickly rose to 12 oclock while music was on  - remote could not do anything so I quickly got to my 52 and turned back the  volume know even though the knob motor kept wanting to turn up the volume.  I quickly shut off my 135s.  For about 2 sec the  from 01 tuner was louder than I would have ever had it.  I pulled the batteries out of the remote and tried the system again - all sounded well but I confess to being worried about my Berrylium tweeters.  I waited 5 minutes again inserted the same new batteries again.  Within 1 minute the same thing happened and the volume was quickly moving up- however my amps were off so no damage.  
Left batteries out overnight and tried everything this AM- system sounded fine and remote seemed to work although I only just tried it for a minute.

Question: Assuming that all seems good can I just assume that this won`t happen again. I leave my system on and I usually leave my remote laying around close to my system.  I am worried that if I am listening one day in the future if this happens when I am not close to my system the music might go so loud that I could blow out my Focal speakers.
I have the cheapy 52 remote as a substitute if I need to use another remote. Can the Flash remote even be repaired? Any thoughts?   david

Posted on: 23 March 2017 by Richard Dane

A quirk of the Flash is that if you don't cleanly snap in the last battery then a capacitor can partially charge and the logic can get confused with the result of either no operation or abnormal operation. The cure is to remove the batteries, leave the unit for a while to allow the cap to discharge (there's a dirty shortcut here but not something I can mention on the forum) and then re-fit the batteries.  You need to cleanly snap in the last battery to ensure there's only one clean contact to make the circuit.  The difficulty is that the battery compartment is a very tight squeeze and so cleanly snapping in the last battery is not always a simple as it sounds.

Posted on: 23 March 2017 by davidf

thanks Richard- I had re--read the old posts on the subject and did what you had said.

My big concern is what is the likelihood of this happening again?  Can I safely use it again without the worry of the volume control skyrocketing?  I love the feel and aesthetics of the Flash but don't want to be forced to get new tweeters!

david

Posted on: 23 March 2017 by hungryhalibut

Nobody can say that it won't happen again, unless they have sufficient personal indemnity insurance. It will probably be ok but who knows? Just make sure you leave the system on mute when you are not using it. The trouble is, if it goes wrong again, it's bound to be while you've popped to the loo, leaving the music playing. 

Posted on: 24 March 2017 by stuart.ashen

Don't you have a dedicated Naim system in the loo Nigel?

Posted on: 24 March 2017 by james n
stuart.ashen posted:

Don't you have a dedicated Naim system in the loo Nigel?

Hopefully not suffering a Flush malfunction .... I'm here all week folks 

Posted on: 24 March 2017 by stuart.ashen

Nice anticipation James. Thought I had set the fish up for that one!

Posted on: 24 March 2017 by davidf

I almost lost control of all bowel function when the volume went sky high so obviously a good laxative

Posted on: 24 March 2017 by stuart.ashen

At least you were in the hot seat.....