My 75$ Craigslist "box-o-amps"

[Jonny Hotnuts]

I wasnt in the mood to buy any amps but I seen an ad on craigslist from a guy who purchased the entire inventory of a used audio store that was going out of business and was selling boxes of amps for 75$. The ad mentioned that they were not able to test the amps (found this was due to the volume of stuff they had). Heres a few things I got in my box, there were 2 crossovers and a processor made by carver KLW and a few more amps not worth picturing but here is the bulk.

BTW:
I lightly benched (with PS and no real load, just seeing if they worked). All the amps with the exception of the little Orion (haven't opened it up yet) worked perfectly. A few had rigged plugs that shouldnt be a problem to fix. The only one I was really concerned with was the LP....I tested it last and held my breath....with a click of a relay it came to life!!!







Here is a bad shot of the inside of the G&S Comp 100. This is also the same board used in the PPI made Sansui SM-1500 Sansui SM-1500 inside - Amp Guts except the Sansui is missing the DIN plug and 2 fets on the power supply.

I have so many amps now I dont know what to do.
Looks like I am going to put some on fleabay.
That is....all except for the 2202 (always wanted a TO3 amp!!!!)

~JH

[Geek]

Such a deal!

Cheers!

[InclinedPlane]

Orion is good stuff.

[Robcrx]

Score !

[Jonny Hotnuts]

Not looking too good for the Orion.
Signs that someone else was 'messin'.

There were a few screws missing from the transistor hold downs, one screw missing from the board and a few caps that look stretched.

[tsmith1315]

You done good Jonny!

[Jonny Hotnuts]

Thanks all.....


After further observation on the 222 here is what I have found:

1. After pulling the foam tape off the caps the shrink tube is pulling off the bottoms of 2 exposing the cap base, and 2 are showing signs of mushrooming.

Please excuse my ignorance but I assume this means they are bad (even without testing).

2. Where the orange wire goes into the board there is a group of components that seem to have a puffy white corrosion around the base of the solder joints (in about a .75" circle). This includes all components localized....could this be from a liquid spilled on the board when someone else had it open or something more ominous?



My real question is now that with the caps that I clearly feel are bad is a very bad sign for the amp, meaning if these caps fail does it usually (*or always) mean that it chain reaction f's up much more?

From what I read people assumed that these SX series amps would play 1ohm mono like the HCCA just because it had Orion on the heatsink. (*the SX were supposed to be really nice amps when correctly loaded however)

Apparently many of them failed due to ultra low impedance loads.

Thanks for any advice

~JH

[DaveM]

Change out the caps if you are in doubt. It would be a shame to blow up speakers because of a couple bad caps. I would simply remove the devices with the corrosion and clean them up and re solder them. It can't hurt if you are careful and don't give anything too much heat.

[spooney]

Awesome find! I'm extremely jealous. I can't pass up a good deal whether I need it or not

[Jonny Hotnuts]

~Also....

Dont know if this means anything but the amp goes into protect on both channels when hooked up....at least WITHOUT speakers.

I hooked the amps up with no speakers attached and zero input to see if the amp starts. I dont know but I *could see an amp that would go into protect with the outputs being open. Because the amp went into protect as soon as the remote had voltage I didnt put speakers on it.

~This is my first Orion, and I dont know too much about them.