Sansui AU-717 Integrated Amp-question

[robertocravallo]

Here in Germany we have a company called BURMESTER. I had a bunch of their stuff and when you listened to it, you knew why it was so expensive! And I don't think I have any special "ears" or anything.

They don't even use pots, because they know they will be a problem down the line....

Take a look here http://m.ebay.de/sch/i.html?_nkw=burmester&isNewKw=1&isRefine=true&mfs=GOCLK&acimp=0&_trksid=p2056088.m2428.l1313.TR9.TRC1.Xburmester&sqp=burmester

[javadog]

Originally Posted by imcarthur

What speakers?

Originally I bought a pair of Energy Veritas v2.8 for this room. Currently have the following choices:

Energy Veritas V1.8, 6 ohms, 87 dB
PSB Stratus Gold i, 4 ohms, 88dB

Not looking to buy another set of speakers at this time. Will wait until I find a set of Grand Utopias in a garage sale.

Ears aren't what they used to be, either. Probably limited to 12k on the top, with a few holes here and there on the way up.

The room has become a catch-all in terms of usage, so not a dedicated listening area by any means. I can play with placement, furniture layout and all that, but I'm probably not going to get serious with room treatments.

JR

[kach22i]

For a peak at what some of the old Japanese stuff can do when compared to more modern stuff watch this video.


Magnepan .7 Review

[imcarthur]

That reviewer is an idiot & the Maggie .7 is a questionable product. Any loudspeaker that is so poorly designed that it NEEDS a mega high current amp to play is simply a poor design. The Apogee speaker from the 80s & the original CLS from M-L were the same. Both had crazy low impedance swings (0.3 ohm - 0.7 ohm at ~16 kHz) that toasted amps. Just bad design. Who cares how good it sounds if the design is flawed.

JR

Neither of those speakers would present a problem load to any good quality amplifier. Both of them deserve a high quality amplifier, however. If you liked them with Krell, the Parasound, B&K or Acurus would be my cheap picks.

Ian

[Scott Douglas]

Thanks for chiming in on that video Ian.
I was thinking the same thing.
Who would want speakers that far from the walls anyways.

My Infinity Column II's will drive me out of the house with only my Pioneer SA-9500 II pushing them.
Who listens to music that loudly anyways?

[imcarthur]

Originally Posted by Scott Douglas

Who would want speakers that far from the walls anyways.

Now, let's not get carried away.

Panel speakers - electrostatics & electro-dynamics - need a lot of space or you will muffle the back wave which reduces the perceived stage depth. The big sell with panels is the sense of space you get so it would be a silly purchase if you are just going to slam them against a wall. 4ft is just a starting point. Box speakers need space as well, due to bass-coupling with room surfaces which unnaturally bloats the bass mid frequencies. A little experimentation is not a bad thing. The biggest problem is usually that your spouse can't handle the placement or other lifestyle reasons butt in.

Ian

[Scott Douglas]

[QUOTE=imcarthur;8889212]Now, let's not get carried away.

I feel lucky in that I managed to hang on to my Infinity's for as long as I have. My wife would have liked to get rid of them YEARS ago, especially when I wasn't even using them for the better part of 15 years or so. My kids grew up never having heard them.
Now that I use them for my surround sound system they can hear why I kept them and understand that their dad wasn't so nutz after all.

[imcarthur]

We all fight with the female need for invisible speakers. This is what killed 2 channel in the 90s & 20s. Hugh dollars were spent on whole house audio with the control being the real $s & audio being a couple of dozen inwalls with 70% gross profit margin. Not a good time for a real music lover.

I will boast about the time I dropped 2 X 10" subwoofers into my home theater (in the family room) and it took my wife 2 weeks to figure out that they were there. And she didn't see them but she heard them: "What's that noise?" "That's bass, dear."

Ian

[Scott Douglas]

I will boast about the time I dropped 2 X 10" subwoofers into my home theater (in the family room) and it took my wife 2 weeks to figure out that they were there. And she didn't see them but she heard them: "What's that noise?" "That's bass, dear."


Now that is funny. My son was insistent that I needed a powered sub when I was hooking up my system. His jaw dropped when he finally heard it for the first time.
'I can hear why you don't need a sub Dad' was all he could say when I demo'd it to him the next time he was home.
My wife complains about the bass on the TV shows I watch. It's amazing how much is there if you have the right equipment to listen to it.
I usually use the fight scene in 'Sherlock Holmes' to demo my system now. You can feel the bass before you hear it.

[908/930]

With the Sansui, when you adjust the volume up and down does it crackle or have static? if not it is probably not the potentiometer but possibly a capacitor.

[stuartj]

Originally Posted by Chocaholic

Bought it new around 1975 while still in high school. That was 40 years ago. It's never needed any kind of service and its in use as I write this. Sound quality is just as amazing as ever.

But...if I go a few weeks without using it, it powers up but I get no sound out of the left channel. To resolve, I crank the volume way up very quickly and the left channel snaps to life and works/sounds great. If used frequently, no problem.

Just did it again tonight after a few weeks off. Hate to take it to a hack as the unit has sentimental value and I don't want it damaged. Hard to ship as it probably weighs 50 lbs.

Any thoughts or ideas? I'm not afraid to pull the cover off and spray some contact cleaner around but thought I'd defer to the brain trust first.

Thanks.

You cant hurt anything with contact cleaner.....(famous last words).

Great amp, its good to see there are still luddites that haven't succumbed to the nonsense of 5:1. Two ears, two channels....

Inspired by this thread, I finally dragged my 80's Accuphase out of the cabinet, removed the covers and bathed it in contact cleaner. Its a monster amp, but with some annoying switches that cause problems similar to the ones you describe. Lo and behold, its fixed.....

Contact cleaner rocks. Ive got a Yamaha guitar amp, since the 70s. Its never failed, despite daily use. Last month, it started to misbehave. Oh well, I thought, it hardly owes me anything.....dismantled, contact cleaner sprayed liberally around the pots....next day- as good as new.

Long live Contact Cleaner.

LeeH, those mono block valve things look awesome.

[Gogar]

There's a lot of horrible info on this thread; if you want to fix your problem please stick to what I said about checking your speaker cables.

After that, Contact cleaner and MAYBE De-oxit (which is great) if you actually know where to spray it. Almost 100% guarantee spraying it in the right place will involve a little disassembly, maybe a lot.

All the other info about watts and ohms and amperes and whatever is worth exactly what you paid for it.

Ian does this every day and knows a lot about it.

[stuartj]

Hey Gogar- after performing rudimentary checks of speaker cable and other connectors (and lets face it, in static household equipment, these don't suffer the same stresses of constant set up/breakdown as does live music gear) an application of contact cleaner into mechanical components which are prone to household dust and oxidization - like the barrels of the pots, into the back of the switch mechanisms - before serious disassembly or a trip to the amp doctor - has pretty much no down side.

[Chocaholic]

Update. All cable connections checked and rechecked. As recommended, did some disassembly and judiciously applied contact cleaner to every pot and mechanical switch I could find. Reinstalled last night and the performance and sound quality is as sublime as ever. The test will be after a couple weeks of down-time.

Also, I decided to reconnect speaker cables through the "B" connectors rather than "A". Overall, glad to have her back in the rack.

BTW...every cap I could see looked fine. No visible swelling, no toasted looking boards, etc. vacuumed the chassis as carefully as possible to remove 40 year old dust, etc.

But, now the Marantz has been re-relegated to the closet. A shame really.

[Eric Coffey]

Originally Posted by Chocaholic

Update. All cable connections checked and rechecked. As recommended, did some disassembly and judiciously applied contact cleaner to every pot and mechanical switch I could find. Reinstalled last night and the performance and sound quality is as sublime as ever. The test will be after a couple weeks of down-time.

Nice! I would have put my money on a dirty/oxidized pot or switch as well.

If it acts up again, the switch on the back with the set-screw that switches that amp from "integrated" to "separate" is a likely culprit, as are the balance pot and A/B speaker selector switch if you didn't get to them previously. The DeOxit D5/Gold combo is hard to beat for that application IMO. There is also an internal "speaker protection" relay that can be problematic. If the issue comes back, and you've done all of the above, you can try tap-testing the relay. Just be careful, and use something non-conductive to reach/tap it.

It you really want to dig in, you could check/adjust the DC offset and bias (idle current). If you have a decent multi-meter with clip-leads, and a basic understanding of how to use one, it is pretty straight-forward. There are prominent test posts on each board for checking/setting the bias, and DC offset is checked/set using the rear speaker terminals.


Here is a link to the owner’s and service manuals that might come in handy in the future:

Service Maual
Owner's Manual

[Chocaholic]

Eric...fantastic info. Thanks.

[imcarthur]

Great thread topic revival, guys!

Mike: Sorry for the extended hijack.

Ian

[scottmandue]

Seeing as this thread is ending... a slight hijack.
I have an old Marantz sitting in the garage, think it is 185W a side, one day it was shaking the windows and walls and the next it went silent. I have checked the fuses.
Anyone know of a good amp doctor in L.A.?
Technically the living room has been taken over by a Pioneer 7.1 receiver and the garage is running a Luxman that took the place of the Marantz but I hate to see the Marantz sitting there rotting away.
TIA

[Eric Coffey]

Originally Posted by javadog

Ian,

Given that prices for old 2 channel gear are pretty low now, apart from the high end exotic stuff, any recommendations for amps in the 250W-and-up/channel range? I'm looking for something I could buy for a couple hundred dollars that would be of reasonably high quality. Integrated, or separate, would be fine.

Excuse the hijack,
JR

Hey JR,

To hijack your hijack of Ian's hijack, err, wait...

Just FYI, there is a guy with 2 older Crown PL4s for sale in OKC. He has 2 available listed at $300 each on Craigslist here:
https://oklahomacity.craigslist.org/ele/5327591453.html

However, he also had them up on eBay recently, starting at $200/each with no bids here:
Crown Amplifier Crown Power Line Four Amplifier | eBay
Crown Power Line Four Amplifier | eBay

If you could negotiate a deal at $400-ish (or less) for the pair via local pick-up with cash, it might be worth the drive.

Very decent 2ch amps that can be bridged, which would give you plenty of clean power. You would be at 530w @ 8Ω bridged for each amp.
Or, you could pick up just one and still be at 165w x2 @ 8Ω or 265w x2 @ 4Ω (they are 4Ω stable in 2ch).

[imcarthur]

Originally Posted by Eric Coffey

To hijack your hijack of Ian's hijack, err, wait...

Ian