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For more than a decade my workhorse has been a NAD surround receiver. I think it's rated for 70 or so WPC (NAD claims that it has headroom up to 110 Watts or something) and it doesn't balk at tough loads. It has a lot of other good things going for it too. I like that it has a few coax and optical inputs that you can bus to whatever source you want. I like that you can "name" the sources. It has a nice, clean timeless look. Really it's been a great fit all these years, and there's nothing to complain about.
Sadly, the VFD display seems to be starting to go on the NAD. It's flickering quite a bit on one side. I've thought about how one might fix that... I don't think I'd be able to source a replacement VFD... maybe it's a cap going bad? Is it worth it to try to fix? Or should I see it as a sign to start looking for a new amp?
I decided to take a gamble on a Facebook Marketplace ad for an Arcam surround receiver from a guy nearby. His ad claimed it as in Very Good condition. Unfortunately when I met him it was 5 degrees outside, so I didn't really have a chance to look it over well. When I got it home the first thing I noticed was that the remote was covered in what used to be that "grippy" rubber coating, but it had disintegrated into super-sticky gunk. I rubbed it with some isopropyl for a while and the coating eventually came off. So that fixed the remote. Onto the amp. Although it's a light-grey color, I started to notice that the front face was really grimy, especially around the volume knob. Again, some isopropyl to the rescue and it looks literally good as new.
When I first turned on the amp I noticed that the volume knob didn't do anything. The volume control on the remote worked, though. A bit of googling and I found out that this is caused by rotary encoders getting too oxidized inside. Your options are to replace them, or open them up and clean the contacts. I took a crack at opening it up and cleaned it, and sure enough the knob worked perfectly after that.
Now for the really bad part. When I hooked speakers up to it, I could hear a very noticeable 60 Hz hum. The hum was not affected by whether or not any sources were plugged into it. I also noticed that the volume of the hum was constant, and didn't change even as I adjusted the overall volume output. More disconcerting was that, occasionally the amp seemed to "pop" which my speakers did not like at all.
My rudimentary understanding of amp repair said to look for a bulging capacitor. I opened up the amp, and sure enough a big bulging 25v 6800 uF cap was looking right at me on the "main board." OK! Replace a cap; I can do that! Then I realized the trouble cap was through-mounted, soldered to the bottom of the board. And that board is under like 6 "daughter boards" each with connectors and bodge wires going every which way. Each daughterboard had several various RCA jacks attached to the back panel with lots of individual screws (I counted 29). So if I'm looking at this right, I need to unscrew 29 screws, disconnect 6 daughterboards PLUS various connectors, and hopefully not bother any bodge wires. Then finally I can hopefully get that main board out to replace a single cap on it? THEN I have to put it all back together and hope I got it right?
Is this what BMW maintenance feels like?
Seriously, though, my mind was immediately going back to how I greatly prefer certain brands for their ease of repairability. Like have you ever worked on a Dell Latitude laptop? It's a breeze--especially compared to trying to work on an Inspiron or XPS or whatever they'd sell you at a big box store. In that same vein, I have stuck with basically just Hondas and Toyotas for the last dozen years, never venturing into the fearsome world of German engineering (shoutout to Javad
).
Maybe I should just go back to using pro sound amplification like I used to many, many years ago. The watts are cheap, the electronics are designed to be easy and quick to repair, and they're meant to take a beating. About the only downside are the fans... which, OK yeah, fans are a no-go.
Maybe I can still use home-audio electronics, but I should stick with the Japanese brands? (Arcam is British. I should have been thinking "Lucas Electronics" when I was opening my wallet to this guy on FB marketplace)
I'm now opening this thread up to all brand biases! Please, tell me your favorite audio electronics brands, and why. Likewise, feel free to bash brands. I want to hear your $.02.
Sadly, the VFD display seems to be starting to go on the NAD. It's flickering quite a bit on one side. I've thought about how one might fix that... I don't think I'd be able to source a replacement VFD... maybe it's a cap going bad? Is it worth it to try to fix? Or should I see it as a sign to start looking for a new amp?
I decided to take a gamble on a Facebook Marketplace ad for an Arcam surround receiver from a guy nearby. His ad claimed it as in Very Good condition. Unfortunately when I met him it was 5 degrees outside, so I didn't really have a chance to look it over well. When I got it home the first thing I noticed was that the remote was covered in what used to be that "grippy" rubber coating, but it had disintegrated into super-sticky gunk. I rubbed it with some isopropyl for a while and the coating eventually came off. So that fixed the remote. Onto the amp. Although it's a light-grey color, I started to notice that the front face was really grimy, especially around the volume knob. Again, some isopropyl to the rescue and it looks literally good as new.
When I first turned on the amp I noticed that the volume knob didn't do anything. The volume control on the remote worked, though. A bit of googling and I found out that this is caused by rotary encoders getting too oxidized inside. Your options are to replace them, or open them up and clean the contacts. I took a crack at opening it up and cleaned it, and sure enough the knob worked perfectly after that.
Now for the really bad part. When I hooked speakers up to it, I could hear a very noticeable 60 Hz hum. The hum was not affected by whether or not any sources were plugged into it. I also noticed that the volume of the hum was constant, and didn't change even as I adjusted the overall volume output. More disconcerting was that, occasionally the amp seemed to "pop" which my speakers did not like at all.
My rudimentary understanding of amp repair said to look for a bulging capacitor. I opened up the amp, and sure enough a big bulging 25v 6800 uF cap was looking right at me on the "main board." OK! Replace a cap; I can do that! Then I realized the trouble cap was through-mounted, soldered to the bottom of the board. And that board is under like 6 "daughter boards" each with connectors and bodge wires going every which way. Each daughterboard had several various RCA jacks attached to the back panel with lots of individual screws (I counted 29). So if I'm looking at this right, I need to unscrew 29 screws, disconnect 6 daughterboards PLUS various connectors, and hopefully not bother any bodge wires. Then finally I can hopefully get that main board out to replace a single cap on it? THEN I have to put it all back together and hope I got it right?
Is this what BMW maintenance feels like?
Seriously, though, my mind was immediately going back to how I greatly prefer certain brands for their ease of repairability. Like have you ever worked on a Dell Latitude laptop? It's a breeze--especially compared to trying to work on an Inspiron or XPS or whatever they'd sell you at a big box store. In that same vein, I have stuck with basically just Hondas and Toyotas for the last dozen years, never venturing into the fearsome world of German engineering (shoutout to Javad
).Maybe I should just go back to using pro sound amplification like I used to many, many years ago. The watts are cheap, the electronics are designed to be easy and quick to repair, and they're meant to take a beating. About the only downside are the fans... which, OK yeah, fans are a no-go.
Maybe I can still use home-audio electronics, but I should stick with the Japanese brands? (Arcam is British. I should have been thinking "Lucas Electronics" when I was opening my wallet to this guy on FB marketplace)
I'm now opening this thread up to all brand biases! Please, tell me your favorite audio electronics brands, and why. Likewise, feel free to bash brands. I want to hear your $.02.
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