Power is off but spirit light still comes on with noise

Hi guys I tend to leave my 200 amp head plugged in at home and have done so when for a while . The other night I noticed it pulses and the spirit lights illuminated only dimly then goes off again .
When you get up close you can hear as it does this it makes a like breathing / electrical sound .
To be clear the amp is plugged in but switched off .
Is this normal ? Is this anything I should be concerned about ? and in this current climate is it running mg electricity bills up ?

Thanks for any enlightenment / advice

Ps my house is not haunted

Mark

Hi there Marky. Sorry for taking so long to respond, I'm not getting emails when a new post is made and I can't figure out why. Anyway...

I don't really know what is causing this as the schematics for the BS200 are not available to the general public. However, I can say that, as it is a universal 100V-240V mains input with no selector switch involved it will have a switched mode power supply. I can't see why it should be but I wonder if there is some sort of permanent powering of some system inside, maybe something monitoring. The amp has AES, a system which switches off the amp after a certain time without use. Have you tried switching this off (assuming you have it on of course)? The switch is on the back near the mains socket. Does changing that make any difference?

...and yes, maybe you are right to consider it, it could just be the ghost in the machine!

As I said in your other post, H&K have confirmed that the regular chirping/electrical sound is normal. It isn't something you should be concerned about. It means something inside is monitoring something and is permanently connected to the mains. That will mean that your electricity bill is feeding it. But it will surely be by a vanishingly small amount and it will be designed for.

Personally I would always prefer to switch something off at the mains outlet socket and even remove the plug when not in use, rather than just leave it live but controlled by the device On/Off switch. It prevents things like this being a worry and it isolates the electricity to inside the wall where there is much less chance of anything going wrong, given sensible house wiring of course.