Be Careful!


With static electricity in this cold dry winter.  I fried the right channel of my Classe Amp last night with the touch of a finger.  I usually have anti-static sheets in hand before touching anything but this time did not.

Good excuse to recap an old amp.
pops
I work with industrial electronics for the last 38 years and by FAR the biggest enemy of our equipment is static(after the "human" factor of course!) as unfortunately the process we are manufacturing generates static at every turn!
I have personally seen 400hp drives killed by static discharge before we got a lil smarter in our wiring and approach.
And dont even mention the blackened fingernails some techs have suffered......lol.
It is a genuine, under-estimated problem for sure.
I leave my stuff on and use a remote... computer audio 90% of the time so nothing to touch on the system.  
So which components inside the amplifier/preamplifier get most affected by the static discharge? What about tube vs. SS gear?  I'd guess active components like transistors inside SS electronic devices are the first ones to get fried, not capacitors, resistors, etc.
ATI must have some kind of safeguard, as twice lately I have been bitten by static as I touched the amp and it instantly shut off, and then immediately fired all five channels back up ... Entire sequence last maybe 15 seconds