Burning smell?

I bought myself a Jessops 360AFD from ebay and it's arrived today. Sadly, when I gave it a shot a burning smell was very evident. The flash works, but I'm wondering if I'll be damaging my camera if I continue to use it? I have a Jessops 300AF flash, which has been used more but never had the burning smell? What could be the cause of this and does anyone know if there's a way to fix it?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Yeah, that doesn't sound good. Burning smells and smoke are usually the signs of melting wires, grounded electrical equipment and generally bad stuff with electronics. Is there a warrenty with this eBay buy? Hopefully so. I'd return it and get one that doesn't smell like that.

How many shots did you take?

When I got my 430EXII, it created a very obvious smoky/burning smell for the first few flashes.

Maybe about 5-10 shots, it's been listed as "new". So maybe it's normal for a new flash? No returns accepted unfortunately. I'll just have to stick with it, and see if it gets any better - thinking of getting this flash if my Jessops one dies:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk …mfe=sidebar#ht_​3163wt_932
Fingers crossed it doesn't though.

Would it be unwise to use on camera in the meantime?

Yikes. I'd sure hate to smoke a good body with a cheap flash. The repair to the body would be more than you paid for the flash....

-Charles

Manually trigger the flash on full power, rather than using the camera to trigger it, to see if the smell goes away. The flash tube gets very hot and some contaminants on the flash tube glass could be burning off with early usage.

A volt meter across the trigger terminals easily measures the trigger voltage, and anything less than 250v is just fine.