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Your most expensive amp repair

My B&O Beomaster 8000 needed some fairly healthy re-building before it sprang into life properly. Parts cost was about £40 - luckily the repairer in question is a good friend so the only additional cost was about £35 in petrol to deliver and collect it.
 
in 1990 I bought a mission cyrus 1, I think it cost £190 which was a sizeable % of my student grant at the time . The family dog pissed on it the same day , I sent it to mission for repair , they still have it !!! The dog is dead .
 
Werner said:
Last month got a Beard P-100

If the output transformer is gone I will weep.

The transport/repair invoice will also make me weep.
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I can't do anything about the transport but when my Yaqin went down I got a new trafo made by an outfit in Essex somewhere, £90. All they wanted was a specification - dimensions, primaries, secondaries, number of outputs, job done. £90 for a custom-made trafo is excellent, and it works a treat. It also has proper 240V primaries so it doesn't overload the valve HT and overheat the whole thing. This costs me a few watts but I'm relaxed about that if it stops it frying parts.
 
Werner , I can identify , I bought a serious (40lb) custom valve headphone amp , cost was no object when it was built , I picked it up from the guy when he went insolvent for a pittance ..
I loved it , best HP amp I ever had. Its now a nice champage colour inside from the smoke of the Xformer that burnt up....
Here's some pics

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There's a lot of Naim repairs mentioned on this thread, maybe I'm lucky, I've had Albarry amps for 30 years and they never needed repairing, they just don't break down and they are designed to be left on permanently.

enjoy your music

regards Al
 
ClaraBannister said:
See, I think manufacturers should be entitled to void the warranty if people have kept equipment on 24 hours a day. It's a damn silly idea, apart from being dangerous. It would probably invalidate your fire insurance. Just another hi-fi foo idea which people have fallen for.
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No it makes great sense and brings me loads of business :D
 
trio leo said:
There's a lot of Naim repairs mentioned on this thread, maybe I'm lucky, I've had Albarry amps for 30 years and they never needed repairing, they just don't break down and they are designed to be left on permanently.
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I'd be inclined to get them checked out as electrolytic caps have a finite life (defined in relation to working temperature), and depending on the specific amp design failure can be catastrophic and expensive (e.g. some failures can take the speakers out too!). I tend not to trust amps more than 15 years old and get them looked at before putting them into regular usage.
 
I'll add that I now (since about 6 months ago) turn my ATCs off, put the DAC into standby, but leave the server on most of the time. System consumption when in this state will probably be about 10-20 watts.
 
trio leo said:
There's a lot of Naim repairs mentioned on this thread, maybe I'm lucky, I've had Albarry amps for 30 years and they never needed repairing, they just don't break down and they are designed to be left on permanently.

enjoy your music

regards Al
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On a serious note..... no amp is designed to be on permanently (and I don't care what it says in the manual!). Doing so WILL reduce it's lifespan by a huge amount (on the lines of from 20 years down to 1 -2 years very approximately). This could be why so many Naim amps are featuring here.... they are inherently quite reliable and well built amps (I won't mention the sound :rolleyes:) but running them 24/7 will soon kill any amp.

Albarry power amps can be very dodgy indeed in my experience.... to the extent that they are the one item I won't repair!
 
ClaraBannister said:
See, I think manufacturers should be entitled to void the warranty if people have kept equipment on 24 hours a day. It's a damn silly idea, apart from being dangerous. It would probably invalidate your fire insurance. Just another hi-fi foo idea which people have fallen for.
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Should I turn my fridge off also?
 
Arkless Repairs said:
Albarry power amps can be very dodgy indeed in my experience.... to the extent that they are the one item I won't repair!
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Why not? I had an Albarry PP1 integrated for a short time many years ago, and it seemed a solid enough piece of kit if memory serves. The sound had some blatant colourations which I decided I couldn't live with though.
 
hammeredklavier said:
Why not? I had an Albarry PP1 integrated for a short time many years ago, and it seemed a solid enough piece of kit if memory serves. The sound had some blatant colourations which I decided I couldn't live with though.
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Because the power amps have a great tendency to blow up for no apparent reason! I speak from personal experience of this happening several times.
In fact it is probably due to the extremely dodgy choice of output transistors which are used well outside of their S.O.A.R..... There are more modern output devices that should be a much better proposition and could even improve the performance. Things like this have no bearing whatsoever on how "solid" a piece of kit appears to be built!
 
Arkless Repairs said:
Because the power amps have a great tendency to blow up for no apparent reason! I speak from personal experience of this happening several times.
In fact it is probably due to the extremely dodgy choice of output transistors which are used well outside of their S.O.A.R..... There are more modern output devices that should be a much better proposition and could even improve the performance. Things like this have no bearing whatsoever on how "solid" a piece of kit appears to be built!
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Fair enough! :D
 
dodg·y (dj)
adj. dodg·i·er, dodg·i·est Chiefly British
1. Evasive; shifty.
2. Unsound, unstable, and unreliable.
3. So risky as to require very deft handling.

Seems to me dodgy is a difficult word upon which to establish a factual truth . Luckily for you fact/truth is an absolute defence to defamation . Glad it aint me that as to prove it though as I think you would lose by a simple statistical analysis of units sold and happy clients versus faulty units .

good luck ;)
 
paul auster said:
dodg·y (dj)
adj. dodg·i·er, dodg·i·est Chiefly British
1. Evasive; shifty.
2. Unsound, unstable, and unreliable.
3. So risky as to require very deft handling.

Seems to me dodgy is a difficult word upon which to establish a factual truth . Luckily for you fact/truth is an absolute defence to defamation . Glad it aint me that as to prove it though as I think you would lose by a simple statistical analysis of units sold and happy clients versus faulty units .

good luck ;)
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Pedant alert :D so it would seem.....

One can easily look up the S.O.A.R data for the output devices and conclude that they are not suitable. I am referring here to the old M408 and M1008 from way back in time. I can't speak for any of the new Albarry models as I haven't seen the circuitry.
 
I had to have my Sugden A21a repaired three times within two years, in total it cost me about £400.

Now i have Naim, leave it on all the time and never have had a problem (yet). I find Naim power amps sound better after they have been left on for ten days, dunno maybe its just me though
 
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