This is a lovely amp, the owner told me it would drop out on the left channel after a few minutes, and after testing for a while I could confirm this. A light tap on the left channel amp module restored the sound on that channel, so out it came for inspection. I found a couple of obvious dry joints which were easily dealt with, but I also noticed some distressed looking capacitors…not bulging or leaking, they just looked like they’d had a hard life. There were eight or nine caps on the module and I found five of them were way off value, a couple of them measuring a mere 20% of their stated value. Finding these problems on the left channel module I assumed there would be similar problems on the right channel module, and I was right, it was suffering from the same dry joints and the same off value capacitors.
I put it back on test assuming I had sorted the issue only to find the left channel dropped out again, this time gentle flexing of the main panel restored the sound. Luckily it was easy enough to get out and I found further dry joints and several more off value capacitors. Putting it back on test again it performed perfectly and, judging by the state of all those capacitors, it was probably sounding a lot better than when it was brought in!
