Cambridge Audio products unreliable/unsupported?

Akg_ca Interesting the thread link you left has been deleted. I have had posts here deleted so I, for the most part, do not participate in the forum.
CA has such a good PR line that I had been recently considering buying a used 851e preamp. I had been looking online for reviews that sunk their teeth into the matter but there really wasnt much to find out . the dirty laundry Im referring to. I had my initial red flag when I was reminded that they are China made. Now, that in itself is not a crime. Purportedly good product can be made in China if its paid for and a viable QC is maintained. Then, I found a review that was positive overall but revealed one telling little detail that coupled with the complaints in this thread have me just saying no. The reviewer mentioned that the volume control knob was cheapish and light and it was mounted lopsided. uneven clearance with the face. The incidence of minor issues revealed in this thread seem to me to be saying lots of cheap parts.

My 740c cd had issues about 6 months out of warranty. The tray was not operating correctly going in and out. I contacted the us distributor and found there was no local repair. Directed to George Mayer in LA. as certified repair source. Cost a bit to ship there and back to HI and the repair also was on the high side for labor. Still that was around 2012 and the unit has been fine since. The issue was with some wheels that drive the tray and door. Kind of wierd issue but repairs have held up. $300+ to repair. If other issues came up now after buying in 2009 I would probably just get rid of it. I already have a sub Sony ES5400 waiting.

Update

The CAMBRIDGE AVR crapped out again a second time with catastrophic effect early in its 3rd year of operation.
The Cdn distributor said that the HDMI issue was somehow outside of the warranty coverage ....not a time issue but a "non-warranty" repair on my dime.
One week later their top. CAMBRIDGE bluray player suffered its own sudden catastrophic FUHBAR meltdown. It was 4 months after the 2 year warranty was up.
The cost to repair exceeded its FMV at that point.

I scrapped the bluray player, sold the AVR and went to an ARCAM FMJ bluray and went to high quality non-chifi separates instead of a chi-if AVR

'Nuff said

I have had 2 CA products. An 840 CD deck and (still have) an 840 preamp.

The 840 deck was reasonably reliable until the CD tray failed to retract into the deck on command from the remote. Still worked if manually nudged. Sold the unit soon after that, but the new user has had no problems with it.

My 840 preamp had the dreaded volume relay issue (they use an array of relays and discrete resistors to adjust volume). After a time period, the volume will suddenly jump up when adjusting up or down in level. The issue has been widely reported on the NET. My unit was no longer in warranty as I bought used, but CA was very responsive and sent me an entire set of replacement relays no charge. They are relatively easy to replace if you have de-soldering equipment. I did find, however, that the CA engineers had specified an incorrect part for this relay, because the relay manufacturer states the relay should be used intermittently only, and CA uses these "on" continuously.

The problem has not returned after the replacement, and I suspect the problem is aggravated by using the ramp volume mode where all the relays rattle as the volume is ramped up from a low level.

I owned threeCA products, the StreamMagic 6, the DACMagic Plus and the Azur 551r AVR, both purchased new. The DACMagic Plus and StreamMagic 6 worked flawlessly, the 551r blew some caps in the video subsystem after a year of operation.

I live in LA and since I purchased online, I took it to an authorized CA repair shop here (George Meyer). They fixed it under warranty with zero hassles. Sounded better than stock afterwards.

I would have no hesitation buying another CA product based on this experience.