Here's a re-cap parts list for the 0.5 for anyone interested...
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.
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@gdaddy1 Unfortunately that’s not true — the input board on my DNA 0.5 Rev A failed after about 35 years and it is definitely an issue with this amp as well as the DNA 1 and I’m pretty sure also with the DNA 2 although I think they did say the DNA 1 was the worst offender. I think Steve later corrected himself on this. I will say that Steve and Pat are big proponents of leaving the amp on and that it significantly prolongs the life of the amp, so if I was you I’d leave the amp on 24/7 (or at least avoid turning it on/off very often) unless you’re going away for several days. They believe this to the extent that when they upgraded my amp a few years ago they disabled the power switch that became just a dummy light so that whenever the amp was plugged in it is on. Pat told me they have since found a magnetic switch that they’re comfortable with so they use that now, but you get the point. FWIW
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@soix I saw this quote from Steve...
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- 167 posts total