???Pre Amp Service???


Howdy..I have a 20+ y/o,Class A Pre Amp that has been sitting in a box for almost 3 years now..I bought it as a matched pair with power amplifier just to use the amp,so never even powered it up to check it out..Last night I unboxed & set it up to check it out for possible listing to sell..Everything works fine & it sounds simply beautiful..
My question is,are there components that wear out with age like the capacitors of a power amp that it would be a good idea to replace before selling to insure proper function in the future?
Thanks much,take care...

freediver

I just now stuck an edit in there about my pre being noisy when I got it running again due to bad tubes, but that would not have been related to sitting.

Your question would be better answered by someone like @atmasphere ,as all I know how to do is make basic checks with basic meters (like a cap checker) and desolder and solder. I was told that the cap checker I have will not predict the life span remaining on a cap, and even if a cap checked good with my cap checker it didn’t necessarily mean it is a healthy cap. Only that if it checked bad, it was definitely bad. I do not know if a tech would have equipment that was sophisticated enough to verify that.

I’d say that if it is a real nice preamp and on top of that you had the film caps updated that would make it more of an attractive buy for some one. But I don’t buy and sell a lot (as a matter of fact, i don’t sell at all) so I do not know. Maybe get an estimate on that and see what it would run?

I started a thread, myself, inquiring about the life of the large electrolytic caps, and I seem to remember getting the idea that they held up better than film caps and I was okay. I was going to change them in my amp anyway, just because if one let go I felt it would be a nasty mess and they would be a breeze to replace in that amp being as there wouldn’t even be any soldering with screw in terminals, but that was a few years ago and i never got around to it and there have been no issues. That is a 23 year old amp and with the exception of one signal cap, there have been no cap failures.

EDIT:  OOPS!  I read your last post real quickly and I thought it was directed my way, and just now noted that it wasn't.  

 

When I did not used my art audio preamp and my audio research for 2 yrs . Ussully the volume tend to be affected. Maybe it gets dirty.I will have intermittent sound on both speakers. When I cleaned it, it goes away. Yes I start on turning on for 4 hrs then play the next day for 2 hours. I do in slowly. 

@freediver If the preamp is over 20 years and its been sitting for 3 unused, I would have it checked out. Solid state equipment survives this a bit better than tubes due to the fact that electrolytic capacitors don't like heat (so they don't last as long in tube equipment) but once you get to 30 years the filter capacitors in solid state gear is certainly suspect.

The fact that it seemed to sound OK is a good sign.