Don’t buy used McCormack DNA 1990s amps

If anyone has a dead McCormack DNA-1 (the original one, not from the Conrad-Johnson era), I will pay cash for a reasonable/fair selling price ($500?)! I need the housing/chassis for a rebuild by SMc. I should never have sold mine to SMc when it died—live and learn, painfully.

@dmader48 

I bet we either know each other or know of people in common. I went to tOSU from '78 to '84 for both undergrad and law school. As I bet you know, Scott, the owner and founder of the store started out selling speaker building kits in the nearby alley of 13th at High St. I have fond memories of just going to look and listen in awe of the some the mega-priced gear. Robert was always on the phone behind the counter at the back but always treated me respectfully and gave good advice. Scott was super-amiable too. Some of the other employees not so much but I did not have the funds for the high priced stuff back then (or now :-) ). 

Btw, I bought the passive McC preamp at the same time I bought the DNA.5 Deluxe and it was the first to go in my system, soon replaced by an Audioprism Mantissa tubed preamp that I bought a Progressive. Progressive did not normally sell Audioprism gear but Robert said "no problem" and ordered one to sell me. I will never forget that he was curious to hear the Mantissa and inserted it into one of the upstairs systems with uber-priced gear. He listened for less than three minutes and announced "sounds hi-fi" in a dismissive tone and walked out of the room. I loved the Mantissa anyway and it remained my preamp for about twenty years. It mated very well with the DNA.5 "Full Monty". 

AND, I vividly remember having long telephone conversations with Steve McC and in one of them he told me that he did not believe after-market power cords could possibly make a difference. Back then they were not common. I sent him one my LAT PC's to try and he called me to tell me he had changed his mind. 

@soix - you cannot say that the board cannot be repaired by anyone.  Do you do repair work yourself?  Any product can be repaired unless the parts cannot be identified or there are no replacement parts available.  That being said, you do not have to get a new board made, you can simply made the part point-to-point wired and get rid of the board altogether.  But you need a competent repair person like we do.

@bigkidz Due respect for your skills and knowledge that I’ll never have, but I don’t think I said the board couldn’t be repaired by anyone.  In fact, Pat told me people had repaired them by soldering in the “cracks” in the board but that the board would just fail soon after as other “cracks” appeared.  The point-to-point solution makes a ton of sense to me, and had I’d known you could do such a thing I’d surely have contacted you, but what would such a repair cost?  Whatever input board SMcAudio uses in their upgrades should last 30+ years along with all the other parts upgrades and Gravity Base I got with the rebuild.  Sounds like you think I did the wrong thing, so just wondering what my other options would’ve been or what you would’ve done?  Very honestly curious of your thoughts. 

@fsonicsmith Very interesting about the power cord thing, and what a classic pic of The Speaker Company!!!

@soix I wouldn't think twice about having had your amp rebuilt by SMC.   What could be finer than to have what is essentially a brand new amp with all new, better and modern parts installed by your amps original maker?  I don't actually know why you would even think otherwise.

In fact, I had my original Museatex Meitner mono amps rebuilt exactly the same way by a person who worked with Meitner, only the case and transformer were reused.  I love it.  One of the monos had failed.

And Happy New Year!