Modifying my Mark Levinson 332 for a unique visual experience


I bought a Mark Levinson 332 in very bad shape. It had some serious internal problems and the exterior was showing 30+ years of neglect. I wanted a Levinson amp since I was a teen but there was no way I could drop that amount of coin on an amplifier. Well after 30+  years this amp has finally found me and we have been friends ever since.

Internally is was a mess. It needed to be fully recapped, needed various components that were exploded and needed a complete voltage gain board that looked like it served a few tours in Iraq. After I made the repairs and dialed in all the adjustments all was good in the world.

An amp of this magnitude is not only an aural experience but there is a visual experience too, right?

Time to tackle the cosmetics. Initially I was going to repaint the covers that were faded from sun or smoke exposure. There were some ugly scratches in the paint too. I decided to strip the paint from the covers with acetone. I didn't realize that the top cover was some top quality aluminum and it was beautiful once the paint was gone. The TIG welds were precise and the surface was smooth. That got my gears going. I was going to take it to the next level and have a unique amp that no one else on the planet has. I was going to polish that high grade aluminum to a mirror finish. The front bezel received the same treatment, as well as the power button, which to my surprise was aluminum as well.

This amp pays tribute to so many other high end amps like Dynas and McIntosh that have some meticulously polished frames and hopefully it is one-of-a-kind. Others suggest that modding it in this manner will drive resale value down. That is not a concern for me. I think this amp is a keeper and now that it is polished I fell in love with it all over again.

Here is a public link to a photo of it:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0yvjhlC62G7SHVJczc2ZUV2OGs/view?usp=sharing  

I welcome comments and thanks for looking!
generatorlabs
After looking at your pictures I have to correct myself. Your boards look exactly like the 332 boards. Your model just has a higher number of output transistors. The 332 has 24. The 333 should have 32. The photos of ultra violent failures that have been burned into my memory are from 336's that have internally mounted MT-200 style FETS. Sorry for the mix-up, as I don't get the opportunity to touch a lot of the other models.  Your current gain board looks pretty toasty. Some of those traces are probably vaporized. The only way to make that board work again is to clean it ultra good, cut out carbonized areas and get crafty with jumpers but it is going to be ugly and you could induce stray capacitances, etc. The components in that area of the board are readily available. The ideal repair is going to require a donor board for that channel. The voltage gain board looks like it may be salvageable in the proper hands. It is going to need a good cleaning and inspection but you may only need to replace those two small capacitors if no traces are damaged. You did not include pictures of the main board but that would plug in on the opposite side from your thermal event so it is probably still good. I would get manufacture dates from those main caps. The minute I saw them I recognized them as the original style Phillips caps. They have a high failure rate and most DIY techs replace them with Cornell Dublier caps. A secondary mylar shield is also now required between the caps and the aluminum frame to keep the outer body of the cap isolated. I imagine the caps expand and contract slightly and eventually rub through the original blue mylar coating. This is a documented inspection and repair point on all of the amps in this series. I would caution anyone against getting a replacement board and just plugging it in hoping it will bring the amp back from the dead. A faulty component upstream on another board could take out the donor board all over again. Comparative probing between the known good channel and the other channel will make swaps a lot more safe and help identify obvious bad components. Also you need to have the amp on a variac or some other current limiting method with the voltage dialed down to the minimum required to just make the amp operational. This will minimize violent failures during testing. The fuse on the amp is NOT going to save you. These amps have insane power reserves and will vaporize anything it can if you give it the opportunity. The amp is basically controlled lightning. I feel your frustration. I hope you do not have a lot of money into it. The best thing to do is wait for a scrapped out unit and buy a used current gain board or buy another used amp and make one good amp from two. You will eventually find a board or a good deal on ebay but it will take some time and a lot of patience. People trade in bad amps for new ones at high end audio shops. Most audio shops don't want to deal with violent failures and they can't get ML parts so they eventually part the amps out. I was lucky enough to get some ML boards from a police raid auction but it took a while. From reviewing the photos of my amps internals it seems the current gain board is ambidextrous, so you don't need to get a channel specific board. The thermal switch TS1 is on the upper right-hand-side of the board on both the left and right channels so outward appearances indicate they are the same board. If I happen to see anything I will make a note here.