Don’t buy used McCormack DNA 1990s amps
This is a public service announcement. There are some yahoos on other sites selling 1990s McCormack DNA amps, sometimes at ridiculous prices. While they’re great amps, and I happily owned a DNA 0.5 RevA for 20 years, they’re all gonna fatally fail. Why? Because their input board is at the end of its useful life, and when it fails your amp is dead and not repairable by anyone — not even SMcAudio. It’s a boat anchor. The only option is to sell it for scraps or get an SMcAudio upgrade that’ll cost around $2000. Given my love of my amp I chose to do full upgrades given what else I could’ve gotten for the same same price and just got it back and will forward thoughts if anyone cares. But the purpose of this post is to warn off any prospective buyers of a circa 1990s DNA amp that it’ll fatally fail soon, so unless you get a great price and plan on doing the SMcAudio upgrades just avoid these amps on the used market. You’ve been warned.
Thanks for your interest. Yes on the LD-2, but no on the 750 monos and the UDP-1. We have never done upgrade work on the UDP-1, but we have done a few pairs of the 750 monoblocks in the past, but no longer. Like the DNA-2, DNA-500, the 750 monos are just too big and heavy for an efficient workflow. They eat up too much time and are too expensive to be practical. Steve M |
#@&&%%**#$ Damn, I spoke with you and Pat about a year ago, and was given a price for capacitor upgrade, and a bunch of other stuff. I will have to add 750s’ to my kids nightly prayers. well, if and when there is a breakdown, I will give a call and ask if you have the time for gold+ revision. cheers Steve, great week. |
@roxy54 Unfortunately not. I’m going through a divorce so my time at home is very limited, but whenever I finally get to hear the damn thing I’ll certainly forward my thoughts. But, I also have to qualify my impressions as I simultaneously changed my preamp to a Linear Tube Audio MZ2 with upgraded LPS (that I’m also using as my top headphone amp) from my former, and excellent, Bryston BP-6. So, I really can’t give an apples to apples comparison, but I’ll definitely forward my impressions for whatever they’re worth. Hopefully will be within a month or so. Sorry for the delay. |
I didn't see anything posted anywhere in this thread about ARC, but thought I'd comment on it: @fsonicsmith wrote:
Pyramid Audio repaired my D400mkii, which ARC says is a very heavy and expensive paperweight if the power caps go bad. (un-serviceable). It works great now, but it's a PITA to deal with from a repair tech perspective (power caps are directly soldered to the boards). But that situation addresses a point brought up in this thread...barring a major malfunction, most equipment can be repaired if someone has the knowledge and/or skill. |
