Don’t buy used McCormack DNA 1990s amps

@audphile1 

I am certainly good with respectful disagreement.  We need more of that around here.

I understand your examples and hear your skepticism but I have been a customer of Steve's now for over 10 years and while I agree with your assessment of his design capabilities, I also believe he is a genuinely good person and I have seen that evidence first hand through working on several projects with him and Patrick, and particularly as we went through the frustration of one project that wasn't a home run initially.  Secondly, he and Patrick have been basically swamped with work for the over 10 years I have conversed with them, and they simply don't need the additional volume of work. 

I do not know why @soix has chosen to inflate the board issue to the point where people think SMc put him up to it in order to generate projects.  IMO, the best thing is to look at Steve McCormack’s own words provided in the message posted earlier in this thread by @soix .  The posted message from Steve provides a factual representation of the input board issue and states SMc’s position based on their first-hand experience working on many McCormack amplifiers, including the reason for the issue, which amplifiers are affected, which are not affected, the risks of problems recurring after a "repair" job, an explanation of why they no longer perform input board repairs, and the reason why a more permanent repair using new boards is costly.  Steve didn't say nobody could repair amplifiers affected with the board issue, @soix ad-libbed that part:

“when it fails your amp is dead and not repairable by anyone — not even SMcAudio,”

Steve did say SMc no longer does the repairs because of the high rate of post-repair failure, which is apparently a business decision that benefits both SMc and their customers. 

@mitch2 that’s my point exactly. This thread is a gross exaggeration of an issue that may or may not happen. Contrary to the possible intent, it does no one any favors.

@soix Didn’t imply that you started the thread to profit. If you read my response and interpreted it as such, you misunderstood my post. 

@mitch2

I believe you guys are making assumptions based on facts not in evidence, and unfairly casting SMc Audio in a negative light.  If you know Steve and Patrick, you would also know that there are not many folks in the audio industry who care as much about the satisfaction of their customers as they do, and you would also know that they have had more than a steady flow of work for years now.  Steve continues to move forward with new products benefiting from his 40+ years in the business and, for him, creating high quality audio playback equipment is clearly as much or more a calling than a business.  SMc certainly do not need to add clients by fear-mongering owners of old amplifiers manufactured by the former McCormack Audio into taking action before the inevitable failure of their amplifier's input boards. 

I do agree with you that most of us have no direct dealings with S. McCormack or Patrick and as such we are just making assumptions based on the facts we can see from our limited interactions (email) or reading of the direct interactions that customers like you have had. As such we may be making the wrong assumption. 

The one thing that bothers me in this current situation is the fact the SMc has stopped giving the schematics out for the old 1990's DNA amps to owners/techs interested in servicing them. If you do a bit of searching you'll find where Steve was noted as being quite open to supplying the schematics to folks for a number of years and that has stopped. I also talked with Conrad Johnson and they will also not supply the schematics, but I kind of expected that as CJ bought the rights to those McCormack amps >20yrs ago.

Because these schematics were at one time given out that tells me that Steve didn't consider them proprietary back then, so that wouldn't have changed. If he's worried about the safety factor of these amps then he should've put out a service bulletin and supplied a replacement input board at a reasonable cost many years ago because some of these amps input boards failed early on back 20+ yrs ago. Irregardless, in the interest of safety if that's what SMc is worried about, a large red lettered addendum on the front page of the service manual could be added stating the fact that the amps with input board problems should be considered due for board replacement and should not be repaired.

There are plenty of qualified technical people out there that are capable of servicing these amps. The thing is that many techs will not touch an amp if they cannot get the schematic. The reason is that the amount of labor/time goes up dramatically when you're working on a piece of electronics without a schematic.

BTW, To anyone interested. CJ will still service the DNA amps. When I asked them for the schematics I was given a quote for a full recap and a replacement of the input board.