Found a dead short in a TV by listening to the power supply

Was working on a Samsung 55 inch from 2019 last week. Kept blowing the fuse right when I plugged it in. Instead of pulling out the multimeter right away, I held the board up to my ear and heard this faint buzzing from one capacitor. Turned out to be a shorted MLCC right next to it that I would've missed for another hour. Anyone else got weird tricks for finding shorts faster?

2 comments

2 Comments

terry_hayes184d agoMost Upvoted

Isn't it amazing what you can catch just by slowing down and using your ears? I've been doing this long enough to know that sometimes the quickest fix is the one that feels like a waste of time. That buzzing trick is pure gold, I've used a plastic straw to listen for bad caps before, it's weird but it works. You just don't think about sound being that helpful until you try it. Makes you wonder how many hours people waste staring at a board when they could've heard the problem in thirty seconds.

jake_mason304d ago

Does that plastic straw trick work on any cap or just the bigger electrolytics? I've used a screwdriver handle pressed against my ear like a stethoscope, works decent for picking up that high-pitched whine from ceramic caps going bad. The buzzing trick is legit though, saved me more times than I can count on those Samsung power boards where everything looks fine until you actually listen to it.