What does it take to damage a solid state preamp?

[byacey]

Unfortunately, I had a very popular bass amp in the early noughts that had a tendency to blow the input of its preamp. The input card had an op-amp chip on it to get the signal into the preamp, and the way it was wired was such that plugging or unplugging, could cause the chip to fail. If the chip failed, the preamp was basically silent.

Their solution? "Here's another board+chip to wire in." and then after the 3rd board "Buy one of our new models that doesn't have the problem."

That aside, if you're playing your gear in a carpeted room, in socks, and you build up static electricity, you can damage the input of some bass preamps from the zap you give your amp when you make contact with it. It used to be a bigger problem than it is now, though.

There are input protection methods for over-load signal levels, and even static discharge. However, if you are generating a 1/2 million volts or more of a static charge, even the best protection may not be sufficient to prevent damage.

 

[Hogarth]

Sourcing significant current is harder on an op amp than clipping is - that'll generate heat, but clipping doesn't generate significant heat, unless something is poorly designed. If you've ever heard of a computer, those things run transistor circuits into "clipping" essentially 100 percent of the time, and some of them can last quite long - at least the circuit parts. Yes, some of them run warm or hot, but that's because they pack BILLIONS of parts into 1 chip. An op amp has ...maybe a dozen.

Thanks guys. This is exactly the info I was looking for.