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.
@soix I wouldn't think twice about having had your amp rebuilt by SMC. What could be finer than to have what is essentially a brand new amp with all new, better and modern parts installed by your amps original maker? I don't actually know why you would even think otherwise. In fact, I had my original Museatex Meitner mono amps rebuilt exactly the same way by a person who worked with Meitner, only the case and transformer were reused. I love it. One of the monos had failed. And Happy New Year! |
@kchamber Just a bit of curiosity. You mention in your post above that you did not go the $1,600 route, but that CJ is working on your amps. Do you mind mentioning what route CJ is taking in updating your amps? |
@kchamber Ah, I see, thanks for the clarification. Was the repair you performed on the "self destructing" motherboard that was more or less the subject of this OP or something else? |
