There are two questions here, I think:
1. are they sonically obsolete?
--> in my opinion, no. There's lots of great 30 year old stuff, and most importantly you said you like it. QED.--> there may be better stuff, but i'd go very cautiously
2. Can it be repaired?
--> with solid state gear, 95% of the parts will last 50-100 years--> however, a few very important capacitors are likely near their limit. If and when they fail, it could be catastrophic.--> yet, even with a major melt down, it probably wont kill the rest of the amp. The biggest casualty might be speakers which could see DC or transients. Are your speakers fused? I really do advise fuses.....about 1 1/2A fast blow. Amazing how LITTLE they degraded the sound. After ripping them out, holder, wiring and all, i put them back in (as in line adapters on my speaker wires)
-> re-capping is not rocket science, but it is laborious. Maybe not worth it.--> while not catastrophic, old power supply caps in particular will slowly degrade the sound. Amazing how good some 30 year old products sounded when i oversaw the re-capping of a dozen or so of them with new, better parts.
Adcom is probably pretty easy to re-cap, relatively.
I agree that you really should look at the modern world of HD streaming, and a good DAC. Need not cost all that much for the DAC there is one i think is a steal at $99 and made right here in the USA. Got a laptop? With a DAC you have a streamer then. And computer streamed FLAC/ALAC files sound consistently better than the same thigns fro a CD - not as one might guess, worse. There are good tech reasons for this. (of course it must be done right, beyond this discussion).
One more story. I had to clean out my hosue to do a rebuild. I pulled out an original NAD 3020, spica TC-50is, and an AR turntable/SME arm/grado cart. Carefully inspected everything and got it working - really nice sound from a little system. SO we dont need new, and we dont always need fancy to enjoy music that sounds WAY better than most mass market crap.
Enjoy,
G
1. are they sonically obsolete?
--> in my opinion, no. There's lots of great 30 year old stuff, and most importantly you said you like it. QED.--> there may be better stuff, but i'd go very cautiously
2. Can it be repaired?
--> with solid state gear, 95% of the parts will last 50-100 years--> however, a few very important capacitors are likely near their limit. If and when they fail, it could be catastrophic.--> yet, even with a major melt down, it probably wont kill the rest of the amp. The biggest casualty might be speakers which could see DC or transients. Are your speakers fused? I really do advise fuses.....about 1 1/2A fast blow. Amazing how LITTLE they degraded the sound. After ripping them out, holder, wiring and all, i put them back in (as in line adapters on my speaker wires)
-> re-capping is not rocket science, but it is laborious. Maybe not worth it.--> while not catastrophic, old power supply caps in particular will slowly degrade the sound. Amazing how good some 30 year old products sounded when i oversaw the re-capping of a dozen or so of them with new, better parts.
Adcom is probably pretty easy to re-cap, relatively.
I agree that you really should look at the modern world of HD streaming, and a good DAC. Need not cost all that much for the DAC there is one i think is a steal at $99 and made right here in the USA. Got a laptop? With a DAC you have a streamer then. And computer streamed FLAC/ALAC files sound consistently better than the same thigns fro a CD - not as one might guess, worse. There are good tech reasons for this. (of course it must be done right, beyond this discussion).
One more story. I had to clean out my hosue to do a rebuild. I pulled out an original NAD 3020, spica TC-50is, and an AR turntable/SME arm/grado cart. Carefully inspected everything and got it working - really nice sound from a little system. SO we dont need new, and we dont always need fancy to enjoy music that sounds WAY better than most mass market crap.
Enjoy,
G