Don’t buy used McCormack DNA 1990s amps

Fair warning. Thanks @soix   

 Thanks for clarification Soix. Didn't mean to come off as confrontational...

@winoguy17 Not at all man. Believe me I had the exact same questions you did when my amp failed.

To the others with excellent and, IMO, rightfully skeptical questions, my cursory understanding is that after about 25 years or so the traces on the board break, fail, whatever, but when you repair the failed areas the traces just start to fail in other areas so it becomes a house of cards. I think the input board was a custom-designed part that is no longer manufactured and I’m guessing, as McCormack is no longer producing amps in large quantities, paying to develop a replacement just isn’t economically feasible or maybe they just don’t wanna spend the time/effort to do it to revive really old amps — I honestly dunno. Please don’t shoot the messenger here, but SMcAudio have been straight shooters with me and I’ll commit to either getting more info or maybe having Steve or Pat respond directly to this thread.

Just FYI and FWIW, here’s my rationale on the thing and why I decided to spend $2500 on rebuilding my amp versus selling my DNA 0.5 RevA for parts and putting the $$$ toward a new amp. First and foremost, I love the way my amp sounds both for my tastes and within the context of my system, and I think we all know how valuable finding that synergy thing is. Second, while it’s certainly possible I could find another $2500 amp that would make me as or more happy is a bit of a crapshoot that I wasn’t sure I wanted to partake in. Third, as SMcAudio reused both my case and transformer, arguably two of the most cost-intensive parts of any amp, I kinda felt like that gave me a leg up over buying a whole new amp. Fourth, Steve has had decades to find parts, wire, gravity base, etc. that meaningfully improve his already-legendary design to another performance level entirely. As a brief aside, the reason he’s been able to do this is because they do mega high-end consulting work for other companies that build cost-no-object products (like Berning) and the fruits of his consulting work funded at that level trickle down into his SMcAudio mods that would’ve never otherwise been possible — win win. Last, given all these points above, I’ve no idea what my fully-modded amp with premium parts would cost if I could even find it new, but I’m pretty sure it’d cost at least twice what I paid for the upgrade and probably closer to 3x when all is said and done. So, doing all this “audiophile math” in my head and being fairly sure I would not only get the similar sonic qualities of my prior amp but all of it at an entirely higher altogether level, I went for the upgrade.

Did I have doubts? Hell yeah!!! Believe me there are the new GaN amps from the likes of AGD, Atma-Sphere, etc. that have me HUGELY intrigued, but those amps are considerably more expensive than the $2500 I paid for my rebuilt DNA 0.5, and the ones from the likes of Peachtree, Underwood, etc., well, there we have more of the crapshoot fear creeping in. There are some Class-A amps that I might’ve been able to snag used (Clayton, Pass, etc.), but I tend to like to leave my amp on to avoid the stress of turn-on/turn-off not to mention the inevitable warm-up time it then takes to get the amp up to optimal operating temp. And then there’s the issue of the electric bill/heat of leaving a Class-A amp on 24/7 — just can’t do it. Incidentally, and somewhat interestingly, Steve and Pat feel so strongly about just leaving their amps on 24/7 to prolong its operating life they disconnect the power switch from the circuit so if the amp’s plugged in, it’s on. The only thing the power switch does is turn on the dummy light on the front to let the wife/significant other know the thing is on. I found that to be good audiophile humor. But, seriously, Pat said I probably prolonged the life of my amp by years by just leaving it on (unless I was leaving for a week vacation or something). BTW, @kr4 if memory serves you did a review of a DNA-1 many moons ago and was quite impressed with it, so maybe you of all people could understand if you could bring that amp to an entirely higher, and maybe even reference level, for $2500 why I might’ve chosen this route. Or maybe not.

Ok, sorry. I did not mean for this to be so long-winded/boring, but bottom line is I commit I’ll get your enquiring minds a more specific answer as to the input board issue one way or another. Past that, have a Happy New Year!!!

If it's a single sided board, it would be pretty easy to scan and make gerber files of and create new boards.... And hell I'm just a diy guy.. If someone has one of these boat anchors for cheap I'm a buyer.. Peace

@pwayland To me you sound like a lot more than “just a diy guy,” at least relative to my ignorant ass. Like I said, I’ll get some answers, but if I’m Steve McCormack and even if I could do it, do I wanna spend my time reviving input boards on 25-30 year-old amps that probably need a cap replacement anyway? If you’re gonna replace the input board and caps, at that point you’re really not far off from getting an amp that performs literally more on a reference level at its price point. If you’re gonna go thru the labor to replace both an input board and caps that I assume would cost $1500+ on its own, why not just spend your time creating truly special amps at not much more $$$?  That said, with many more 1990s DNA amps likely to fail from now on maybe you could set up a cottage industry just replacing those input boards. Do you think that’d be a worthwhile business? Could be I guess.  To me, I got 25 years outta my amp and time to move upward and onward one way or the other. But kuddos if you think replacing input boards on 30yo amps is a viable business model. Just my thoughts from a business perspective, but I’m all happy happy doing just doing the full-Monty upgrade. But that’s me.