I had a mint AU-717 in Spain that I thoroughly overhauled, aided by some some great advice over on audiokarma.org. It was a dirty beast when I opened it, covered in dust and filth, and it was kind of working. I replaced all the aluminum electrolytics, many film caps in the signal path, some diodes and the relay. I changed the dried out thermal paste under the amp transistors and also a set on the PSU board. The giant Nichicon PSU caps were measuring all different and well below the marked capacitance. It cost about 250 euros to source all the parts from Mouser and Digi-Key, and over a third of that was spent on the new Nichikon GoldTune 15000uF 63V PSU caps that are a drop in match for the originals. I used plastic scrapers and dental tools to carefully remove the corrosive glue that had turned red where it was reacting with component leads. I cleaned the thick film of flux off the back of the PCBs with 99.9% IPA. It was a big task but also a lot of fun for a month or so during an very limiting 2020. I had to sell it when we moved to Seattle recently, and it was especially painful because of the time I put in and because I knew it would be very difficult to find another one that cosmetically nice.
Fast forward to now and I managed to dig up another one locally and have just ordered all the parts. I saved project/BOMs for each board on Mouser when I did the order the first time so it was pretty easy. Except that there are shortages on tons of components so I had to order from Mouser, Digi-Key, Arrow, and eBay this time to get everything. I'm looking forward to it, and even have a brand new Hakko FX-888d and tons of desolder braid lined up for the project.
FWIW I am quite skeptical of any overhauled Sansuis on eBay. A lot of them appear to still have original PSU filter caps which (from my experience) are all going to be on their way out. Replacing all the parts costs a lot, and the time spent to remove them, scrape the corrosive glue, clean the glue from the vias, etc. is significant. So beware of sellers describing complete overhauls when they've really maybe replaced a few caps or the relay, set the voltages, and cleaned up the faceplace/case. Audiokarma is definitely where I'd be looking (as the OP mentioned) because you've actually got fanatics like me who are interested in putting the necessary time into the job, and not trying doing it for a profit.
Anyway, here's the one I did in Spain, before, during, and after: https://pinkfishmedia.net/forum/threads/sansui-au-717-overhaul.248541/
Fast forward to now and I managed to dig up another one locally and have just ordered all the parts. I saved project/BOMs for each board on Mouser when I did the order the first time so it was pretty easy. Except that there are shortages on tons of components so I had to order from Mouser, Digi-Key, Arrow, and eBay this time to get everything. I'm looking forward to it, and even have a brand new Hakko FX-888d and tons of desolder braid lined up for the project.
FWIW I am quite skeptical of any overhauled Sansuis on eBay. A lot of them appear to still have original PSU filter caps which (from my experience) are all going to be on their way out. Replacing all the parts costs a lot, and the time spent to remove them, scrape the corrosive glue, clean the glue from the vias, etc. is significant. So beware of sellers describing complete overhauls when they've really maybe replaced a few caps or the relay, set the voltages, and cleaned up the faceplace/case. Audiokarma is definitely where I'd be looking (as the OP mentioned) because you've actually got fanatics like me who are interested in putting the necessary time into the job, and not trying doing it for a profit.
Anyway, here's the one I did in Spain, before, during, and after: https://pinkfishmedia.net/forum/threads/sansui-au-717-overhaul.248541/
