@jfmerk
Lol! That definitely explains the 3 prior owners. I think this sort of thing -- gear sounding bad because of a significant wiring/circuit mistake, etc -- happens far more often than we’d like to admit. I once had a headphone amp serviced, and the guy said the new caps would "take a while to break in". But even so, it sounded so anemic in bass (as in NO bass), I had to crack it open for a look. Instead or wiring a tiny 0.47uF bypass cap in parallel to the big output cap, I saw that he wired it in series! I did the capacitor ESR calculation, and determined the bass was rolling of (-6dB an octave) starting at 1kHz! It would have been down by more than 20 dB at 100 Hz. A million years of burn-in couldn’t fix that! I also notice L/R channels occasionally being mis-wired in gear, etc.
Glad you got it sorted. Your excellent description of the issue is what lead to the solution!
ALWAYS questions things. Don't assume it was built correctly; people make mistakes (some more than others).
Lol! That definitely explains the 3 prior owners. I think this sort of thing -- gear sounding bad because of a significant wiring/circuit mistake, etc -- happens far more often than we’d like to admit. I once had a headphone amp serviced, and the guy said the new caps would "take a while to break in". But even so, it sounded so anemic in bass (as in NO bass), I had to crack it open for a look. Instead or wiring a tiny 0.47uF bypass cap in parallel to the big output cap, I saw that he wired it in series! I did the capacitor ESR calculation, and determined the bass was rolling of (-6dB an octave) starting at 1kHz! It would have been down by more than 20 dB at 100 Hz. A million years of burn-in couldn’t fix that! I also notice L/R channels occasionally being mis-wired in gear, etc.
Glad you got it sorted. Your excellent description of the issue is what lead to the solution!
ALWAYS questions things. Don't assume it was built correctly; people make mistakes (some more than others).