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Disaster strikes


winchester21

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You might want to grab a beer or a shot of straight 100 proof Vodka before reading this one. Turned my 2 ch system on Tuesday. Heard the most sickening sound imaginable- cracking - popping- burning. One of my Monoblocs literally went up in smoke before my eyes. Sickening yellow flame around the rear section. Smoke filled the room. Smell of burning wires. Like driving up on the worst car accident that you have ever seen. Dont' have a clue what happened. No changes or anything to cause it. Worked fine for months. Opened it up. CIrcuit boards and chassis are not burned. Oil running out of the rear area which is sealed. I have several very intelligent techs in the area that will look at it for me. I am working on several angles to correct the problem. No bad vibes toward the seller. Bought as a project DYI as is for a very low price. So I am not even going there. Just glad that it did not dammage the rest of my stuff or burn the house down.

Rolled through 8 different amp /preamp combos from my boneyard and my HT outboard setup to have something to listen to. MAC c34V-B&K 4420- HK 870-carver 753. Settled on the Mac 2105 and the Peach 2. The 2105 pretty much killed the others. The Peach vs the SS Mac C34v was no contest. Bad as this is - I have picked up some new insight as to this hobby. Tubes murder solid state with Heritage stuff- particularly k horns. Going back to SS makes that fact pretty obvious- to my ears.The SS definitely shines in terms of bass but the highs are not the same at the top and the miss are pretty much missing with SS by comparison. Just a question of getting tubes that will carry the volume and bass that is required. The idea of bi amping using ss to run the bass and tubes for the top end is becoming more appealing- at a later date when money allows- maybe with Jubs.

The old SS macs out of the 70s have a very beautiful quality that do not hear in other SS amps. Richer, warmer. less metalic in nature. The 2105 really lets the k horns eat when it is time to crank up the volume. The thunderous wall of sound/volume in the Dark side of the moon hybrid SACD CD is something that I am enjoying during this interim period.This was posssibly the best 700.00 I ever spent on audio equipment. I still miss the tubes

This hobby is like wine. The madness requires better and better gear to please the listener. The 8.00 dollar wine bargain that you drank 3 years ago when you started drinking wine now tastes like camel @ss compared to the 40.00 cabernets and Syrahs from Napa or Barossa. (that is why I am headed back to 20.00 Vodka- LMAO). By the same token some of my old stuff that I previously enjoyed sounds pretty awful now after Klipsch- peach and tube upgrades. i played pretty much everything in the house over the last 2 days looking for somerthing to use. It is amazing how your taste changes- to the demise of your checkbook.

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Sickening yellow flame around the rear section. Smoke filled the room.

My wife complains about this on an almost-daily basis...from me.

Oil running out of the rear area which is sealed.

Been there, done that (see response #1).

Sorry about all this. It sucks big time when your stuff blows up (even if it blows up real good...).

farmfilmreport_sm.gif

Farm Film Report

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Fini you are nuts, your wife deserves a trophy or medal or something ! [;)]

Winchester sorry to hear about that, good thing it didn't take any speakers with it, it could have been much more expensive.

Although from all the testing, and trying things out you have a real good idea what you like and don't like, that alone is a big plus, many people never get to that point.

Glad you were there to get everything under control. [Y]

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Hey Win, Sorry to hear about the flame out! That sucks! I guess we have to stay positive and look at it as a time to......... UPGRADE!!!! [:P]

Like you say though, it could have been worse, but it was bad enough!

Where's my Vodka........

Dennie

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Thanks for the kind words. I would not wish this on my worst enemy.I was pretty freaked out for a couple of days over this but now moving foward to a solution.

I really learned a lot switching and swapping stuff during the last few days. The idea of a bi amp setup with SS and tubes together really has me thinking- and headed for trouble.

I am thinking that this was a transformer failure- based on my extremely limited knowledge. I may have both of these gone through completely and modded to the max- changing and upgrading stuff. This was really a killer amp before the melt down.

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UNSRET- Dude- that was cold- hard core. Cold sober- Just walked in the door from work- got some CDs from amazon in the mail- Looking foward to hearing them and all he&& broke loose when I turned the system on.

No booze before the melt down but sure as he&& after. I got trashed on Vodka. the misses did not dig the mac at all. Bass rattled the dishes. K horns were rocking out to 110 db Macintosh rock and roll. I really do like this old amp. If you read the reviews of people who bought the 2105 used the reviews are off the charts. It aint tubes but it will do until I can get back up and running.

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