Well got my GK MB212...again!
Again? More on that in a bit.
First off, so far a am really excited about how great this little amp sounds. I've only played around with it for a bit, but I am very pleased. GK really hit the mark with this amp. And what can you say about the weight! Wow!
But I did come across an issue that I think GK is now aware of has taken some corrective steps.
The first one I received last week had something loose in it right out of the box. If you shook the amp slightly, there was something moving around in the metal amp compartment.
My first thought was they forgot some screws? I did notice allot of screw holes on the back of the amp chassis with no screws. But reading here on TB, that was normal.
Long story short, I opened up the amp compartment and sure enough the internal PCB was flopping around like a fish out of water.
Inside the amp, they use what looks like threaded pem studs to hold the PCB in place. These pem studs basically are pressed into prefab holes in the metal chassis.Those are all those empty screw holes you see on the back. Then they attach the PCB to the studs either by screws or nuts. I've worked with pem studs and sheet metal before, and generally they are pretty strong.
Well when I looked into the chassis, every one of the pem studs had broken off where they attach to the chassis. So the PCB was just hanging free. Obviously the amp took some sort of bump during shipping to cause that, although I could not tell from the shipping box which was in good condition. This had me concerned since this amp is suppose to be "portable", yet these studs all broke.
I can't blame GK 100%, this little amp did travel a long way to get to Florida. GK has no control over the shipping monkeys throwing boxes around.
Well got on the phone with GK and they sent me out a new MB212 which I got today (thank you guys!).
First thing I noticed when I took it out of the box.....all those empty screw holes on the back now have screws in them (see pic). If they have not changed the design, adding the screws is a easy and effective fix to keep the pem studs in place. If they did happen to break, the screws would still keep them in place. Maybe with this new amp they did away with them totally.
For those that have these amps with the empty screw holes, it may be a good idea to secure them studs with some screws. Not sure the screw sizes, but maybe GK will chime in here and either say I am totally wrong.....or the screw size is xxxx.
Please do not take this as GK bashing, it is not. I always have liked their products and I think I will be getting allot of use out of this MB212. Design flaws happen, heck even the new iPhone has the reception flaw if you hold it the wrong way! But maybe this thread could help prevent some PCB mishap with other MB212's out there.
Here is how the back of mine looked.
