Problem with marquee light board

well, I just assumed that the light panels in my big red were bad, but today I did a little investigating. I discovered that the panels had been disconnected from the controller board. I thought that was odd until I turned it on and a faint whine could be heard from the controller board. My 4-slot is stuck on crosshatch, but when you go to the test mode it cycles through the lights. It whined the whole time it was cycling, and on number 3 it even created some interference (snow) on the monitor. Any idea whats up with it?

The whine comes from the lights being dead or going bad...The Panel board is disconnected from the controller board to get rid of the whine.

It's common..
...
Once new bulbs are installed thew whine goes away.

chris1 said:

The whine comes from the lights being dead or going bad...The Panel board is disconnected from the controller board to get rid of the whine.

It's common..
...
Once new bulbs are installed thew whine goes away.

Click to expand...

Yep. I've disconnected all of mine in my cabs for this reason and installed a flouresent light in my big red as I don't want to be bothered with el light panels. All minis are lite up all the time but it looks much better then it did with no light.

The inverter that drives the panels oscillates at around 3.6 Khz, 100 volts peak to peak, no prob when the panels are OK (like 10-15 years ago) but when they fail there is more load on the inverter and it sings out.

Disconnect the panels or replace them (which is more or less what Chris said)

I have replacements but I was just curious

chris1 said:

The whine comes from the lights being dead or going bad...The Panel board is disconnected from the controller board to get rid of the whine.

It's common..
...
Once new bulbs are installed thew whine goes away.

Click to expand...

Sorry to jump in on this thread, but I'm having the exact opposite of this problem. On my 2 slot, EL lights don't work, but as long as the panel board is plugged in to the controller, i get no whine. If I unplug it, I get the whine noise?
Bad ELA controller board? Or bad bulbs? Both?
Thanks!

RedWolfJC said:

Sorry to jump in on this thread, but I'm having the exact opposite of this problem. On my 2 slot, EL lights don't work, but as long as the panel board is plugged in to the controller, i get no whine. If I unplug it, I get the whine noise?
Bad ELA controller board? Or bad bulbs? Both?
Thanks!

Click to expand...

Sometimes:
You need to unplug the controller/driver from the motherboard iteslf
..all above that=diver to EL panels can be left plugged into each other then..
When after installing new bulbs then just plug the driver back into the motherboard..