hi david..

ive tried to draw it out. i hope i havent missed out something important...



after hunting around the web i managed to stumble across a couple of posts on http://lists.merlins.org/ that had an empeg-general section. some posts from 'Ezekiel' whom i think frequents this board too? describe a similar problem here and in detailed steps here. this is back in 2000! he posts in earnest and many members try to point him in the same direction as ive been, finally in this post he describes a relay switching straight to ground method (well i think thats what it does) that worked for him...

over the weekend i will try testing the empeg by powering the unit up to play mode, then cutting the connection to the switched ACC altogether (like how he did it by pulling the fuse). ie so that its hanging in the air as an open circuit. hopefully this means no chance for any kind of spike to reach the empeg... if it doesnt bang and pop, and it goes into a nice quiet standby as expected, then id have to say its the way my car pulses the acc line, as zeke experienced. if it still bangs hard and shuts down, then i guess the empeg itself has become damaged...

if it goes into standby quietly i guess i will have to utilize zeke's relay method and provide a seperate ground to the empeg's orange IGN sense line, so that it gets a clean earth and no spiking. and pray it works!