2 August 2019

Caline P5



'Adoih' aka 'ouch' says the owner. The exterior enclosure has many undeburred edge to start with.
The main problem are a few tiny switches does not click in place, disrupting the required output supply. Looks new and too early to have such problem.
This is a power supply unit from Caline. At first I thought it's pronounced either as Cadine or Caqine.
Lawak Bodoh aside, First thing is first, I filed the knife like edges. I hope later badges will be no glove safe. The QC should run their fingers under there prior packing just to be sure. We certainly don't want to injure any guitarist fingers after. Especially the working ones. Mudah-mudahan celaka lah tangan-tangan yang tidak bertanggungjawab dimana ia dibuat!
Continuing on, I did an internal inspection and there's cracks on the red selector plastic embodiment. What I'm going to say will sound blunt but it's appears that there's a design flaw. The DIP switch is deeper than it should. Instead of being flush with the metal cut out. The purpose of the cut out is to hold firm the switch aside from the obvious. As it is the dip switch would move even with a feathers touch hence what more on shredding fingers. Yes, this explains it.
The Caline P5 looks identical to Mosky Padola power supply. I wonder who did this poor design for who here. A or B or an unknown source. But I try to look on the bright side. Its RM50 (parts and labour) for my bench that’s isn’t so bad at all. That’s just one, imagine 100. That could get me closer to a Keysight 100Mhz four channel scope. Thanks Caline for supporting the servicing sector. Keep up the bad good work.
I got a call one day from the owner asking my thoughts and how many stars to give this power supply. I never expect such questions to begin with but I told him the fucking enclosure almost cut me too and I had it deburred, sanded and polished all 6 edges of the aluminium case. He was pleased to hear it and that was it for the phone conversation. Ada yang lebih penting untuk difikirkan.
No stars nor thumbs given but instead, a deserving three turds and two emphasized uninjured middle fingers. With that I am not interested to evaluate the guts. I let the readers judge it.
On the other hand this Caline Power Supply is quiet a versatile unit. Aside for powering up pedals, by default it’s a potato cutter, boobi trap for pedal thieves or serve as weapon of self-defence (at a right angle).
I’ve yet to decide whether to order the same switch or find a slightly taller one (for improvement). I think you know what I am going for. If you see a (or some) P5 with a different switch, you know whose bench it had come off. Hehe.

Verdict - Bad design with bad exterior finish.

Thank you
yustech




4 comments:

Ijau D. Koceng said...

"The DIP switch is deeper than it should"

- it should be called DEEP switch :)

YusTech said...

lol, yes it should sir.

Abdul Aziz Sanford said...

Three turds is a fair assessment, I believe

100 EUR said...

Aside from the imperfect finishing, do you found out that it is powered by a toroidal transformer and it it is not a switching one as all powered by 12V DC? Does this make any sense for you? ;)