2. amps-preamps
  3. 181722-96

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. 

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Showing 1 response by musicaddict

musicaddict
370 posts
 

My older DNA-1 was running last I checked but the message wasn't hopeful.

I have talked with Steve perhaps twice over the years with and thought he was a straight shooter when he was helping me for free on small stuff on my amp.

Always hung onto it as a 'bullet-proof' backup amp, but maybe not...  :-(   Still a great amp but almost always sounds too warm on Raidhos, so sitting in storage.

 

 

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