It is not commercial. I was clear I am not expecting you or anyone to send me equipment. But I have to stand on the truth and what is right, and what is wrong.
What you are doing doesn't even come close to the original performance, and everyone should know that. Just as they ought to know that there are many other issues you are not dealing with. In some ways you are not helping these people. You make something that makes noise, but they do not have a Counterpoint.
If it makes you feel better, most equipment repaired by "Counterpoint specialists" are a mess and have as many problems as your fixes do. What is charged is immaterial, the equipment is not fixed properly. That is the point.
So, I accept you get them functioning and making noise. They aren't right and people need to be clear on that. Do what you do. Please learn to do it better. Being a hobbyist is no excuse once you are doing the work.
I was taught professionally and what I was taught was either do it right, or don't touch it. Once you do any work for anyone else the onus is on you to get it exactly right. I am really hard on that point. When you do work for anyone else no matter what you charge, you are representing yourself as someone who knows what you are doing. You really have to get it right. Not to mention that you are legally liable for damages caused by your work. Amps don't generally burn, but speakers really can - and do. What do you think a friend (or his/her wife) will do if they lose their house due to your work? You will be in court. This is not far fetched and I am only trying to warn you in an effort to help you out. Since you are not a professional technician with all the proper equipment and experience, you will be toast in court.
Being a hobbyist is never an excuse to not be held responsible for work you do. In court, you would be held as being reckless. I'm not trying to be hard on you at all. But this is the reality of the law. Each thing you touch is a liability for you. They are for years to come. So, keep your work and risk to yourself.
-Chris
What you are doing doesn't even come close to the original performance, and everyone should know that. Just as they ought to know that there are many other issues you are not dealing with. In some ways you are not helping these people. You make something that makes noise, but they do not have a Counterpoint.
If it makes you feel better, most equipment repaired by "Counterpoint specialists" are a mess and have as many problems as your fixes do. What is charged is immaterial, the equipment is not fixed properly. That is the point.
So, I accept you get them functioning and making noise. They aren't right and people need to be clear on that. Do what you do. Please learn to do it better. Being a hobbyist is no excuse once you are doing the work.
I was taught professionally and what I was taught was either do it right, or don't touch it. Once you do any work for anyone else the onus is on you to get it exactly right. I am really hard on that point. When you do work for anyone else no matter what you charge, you are representing yourself as someone who knows what you are doing. You really have to get it right. Not to mention that you are legally liable for damages caused by your work. Amps don't generally burn, but speakers really can - and do. What do you think a friend (or his/her wife) will do if they lose their house due to your work? You will be in court. This is not far fetched and I am only trying to warn you in an effort to help you out. Since you are not a professional technician with all the proper equipment and experience, you will be toast in court.
Being a hobbyist is never an excuse to not be held responsible for work you do. In court, you would be held as being reckless. I'm not trying to be hard on you at all. But this is the reality of the law. Each thing you touch is a liability for you. They are for years to come. So, keep your work and risk to yourself.
-Chris
Hi phi70,
When you are done your work, the amplifier doesn't sound quite as good as an original. Compared to some I have seen, what you are doing is better. Still, it isn't right and there are issues that can cause the output to go DC you are not addressing. Beyond a fuse, there is no output protection either. Personally, when I was doing warranty service on them, I did not consider these a safe amplifier to use. It just hangs together, but if there is a fault, you stand a good chance of damaging whatever speaker is connected to it. The SA-220 is even worse in that regard because there is even more energy to dissipate in a speaker during a fault.
Fuses are a time delayed device that opens without a well defined time. Depends greatly on the current and the temperature of the element when the overload occurs. Not to mention the distortion they cause. All in all, these are not clean amps as they were designed. You are by your own admission repairing many of them. Therefore this is no longer a cost sensitive repair, it is a series of repairs done as cheaply as you can do them. I think you owe it to anyone who brings you an amplifier to have studied and understand them. You need to be doing this better than a hobbyist. Otherwise you are denying these people access to proper service and a safer amplifier to operate. Low hanging fruit and all that. If you are not willing to figure out how to do them properly, don't do any more and restrict yourself to doing equipment that was at least safe to operate and had a workable design. People who have these amplifiers do deserve to have the dangerous issues corrected, and the performance improved. You are giving them the idea that the repair is a good one (otherwise they wouldn't allow you to work on them), and it isn't. You think you are helping these people, but you are not. They remain exposed to the failure modes and poor sound when they could have those things corrected. Doesn't matter how much you charge.
-Chris
Compared to what they can do when properly repaired, even a working original amp just makes noise. You would understand if you ever heard one working they way they could and still sounding like a Counterpoint.
When you are done your work, the amplifier doesn't sound quite as good as an original. Compared to some I have seen, what you are doing is better. Still, it isn't right and there are issues that can cause the output to go DC you are not addressing. Beyond a fuse, there is no output protection either. Personally, when I was doing warranty service on them, I did not consider these a safe amplifier to use. It just hangs together, but if there is a fault, you stand a good chance of damaging whatever speaker is connected to it. The SA-220 is even worse in that regard because there is even more energy to dissipate in a speaker during a fault.
Fuses are a time delayed device that opens without a well defined time. Depends greatly on the current and the temperature of the element when the overload occurs. Not to mention the distortion they cause. All in all, these are not clean amps as they were designed. You are by your own admission repairing many of them. Therefore this is no longer a cost sensitive repair, it is a series of repairs done as cheaply as you can do them. I think you owe it to anyone who brings you an amplifier to have studied and understand them. You need to be doing this better than a hobbyist. Otherwise you are denying these people access to proper service and a safer amplifier to operate. Low hanging fruit and all that. If you are not willing to figure out how to do them properly, don't do any more and restrict yourself to doing equipment that was at least safe to operate and had a workable design. People who have these amplifiers do deserve to have the dangerous issues corrected, and the performance improved. You are giving them the idea that the repair is a good one (otherwise they wouldn't allow you to work on them), and it isn't. You think you are helping these people, but you are not. They remain exposed to the failure modes and poor sound when they could have those things corrected. Doesn't matter how much you charge.
-Chris
I don't desire to start a discussion on the speaker protection aspects. I know what they are and I know how to implement them. I have used and seen and heck even been a victim of designs without DC protection (Roland 1 killing my old Avalon Ascent II, Tenor OTL popping 1 tube and sending a constant 21V DC never tripping any fuse). Believe me I have seen them. None of Mike Elliott's designs that I have seen have any output protection. You can say "hey that's why he's out of business and if you don'tmake extensive mods these units should remain in the trash can" If that's the case let's have the discussion end here.
Source/ballast resistors are deployed in almost every commercial implementation of power mosfet output stages. There's a practicality aspect to it IMO. You can rebuild the thing to a bipolar amplifier, why not an all tube amplifier then?
There are many other fail-safe kinds of things we can think of I am sure.
Source/ballast resistors are deployed in almost every commercial implementation of power mosfet output stages. There's a practicality aspect to it IMO. You can rebuild the thing to a bipolar amplifier, why not an all tube amplifier then?
There are many other fail-safe kinds of things we can think of I am sure.
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I have designed an all tube amplifier. 
Solid state ones too.
The design goal (I've done all the Counterpoint preamps over) was to retain the core Counterpoint sound and basic design. But if you use emitter or source resistors, you must also use high levels of feedback. That is not the basic design of the Counterpoint amplifiers. I feel it was important to return to the owner an amplifier that sounded like the original Counterpoint amplifier - but better in every regard. That and to also deliver a safer design that wouldn't fail due to design issues. This was done, and it wasn't easy.
Feedback in of itself is a very good thing. It will not fix a bad design, but it will improve performance of almost any design that was competently done. In the Counterpoint amplifiers, there is some low amount of feedback that M.E. didn't realize he designed in. However, not nearly enough to allow the use of source resistors.
What killed Counterpoint was poor design everywhere he used any semiconductors. He went to war with the real engineers hired to save the company and ensured disaster. In the end, once the dust had settled, we (service people) were free to redesign his disasters properly and deliver to his customers some top notch products. M.E. chose to milk Counterpoint as much as he could, then he threw his support behind someone who followed his thought process once he retired. That guy really destroys Counterpoint products. Neither of us makes a lot of noise about repairing Counterpoint. Those who do are the hacks. You have discovered this in units you have seen.
In my view, Counterpoint products need to be redesigned to run safely and properly. This brings lower noise and distortion to he customer, and far greater reliability. In other words, real value. Once redesigned, Counterpoint equipment is very reliable. You don't want to talk about output protection, but this is intertwined with sound quality. There is no escape and you can't ignore that aspect. To do so is merely poking your head in the sand and hoping the topic dies.
My view is shared by those who understand these products, and the one other person I know of that does repair them properly. It is the right way to approach these products.
Solid state ones too.The design goal (I've done all the Counterpoint preamps over) was to retain the core Counterpoint sound and basic design. But if you use emitter or source resistors, you must also use high levels of feedback. That is not the basic design of the Counterpoint amplifiers. I feel it was important to return to the owner an amplifier that sounded like the original Counterpoint amplifier - but better in every regard. That and to also deliver a safer design that wouldn't fail due to design issues. This was done, and it wasn't easy.
Feedback in of itself is a very good thing. It will not fix a bad design, but it will improve performance of almost any design that was competently done. In the Counterpoint amplifiers, there is some low amount of feedback that M.E. didn't realize he designed in. However, not nearly enough to allow the use of source resistors.
What killed Counterpoint was poor design everywhere he used any semiconductors. He went to war with the real engineers hired to save the company and ensured disaster. In the end, once the dust had settled, we (service people) were free to redesign his disasters properly and deliver to his customers some top notch products. M.E. chose to milk Counterpoint as much as he could, then he threw his support behind someone who followed his thought process once he retired. That guy really destroys Counterpoint products. Neither of us makes a lot of noise about repairing Counterpoint. Those who do are the hacks. You have discovered this in units you have seen.
In my view, Counterpoint products need to be redesigned to run safely and properly. This brings lower noise and distortion to he customer, and far greater reliability. In other words, real value. Once redesigned, Counterpoint equipment is very reliable. You don't want to talk about output protection, but this is intertwined with sound quality. There is no escape and you can't ignore that aspect. To do so is merely poking your head in the sand and hoping the topic dies.
My view is shared by those who understand these products, and the one other person I know of that does repair them properly. It is the right way to approach these products.
I second anatech. I was working at Counterpoint at a time when they were still in San Diego, 87-88. I was doing set-up and burn in of the SA-100 and SA-4. Roughly 10% of the SA-100 would blow up during burn in. The SA-4 needed several re-adjustments during burn in. They used huge electro-static speakers (Magnepans?) for listening tests and Vandersteen floor speakers.
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Hi Chris
some history of Counterpoint. It was a small company in Los Angeles when M.E. bought it ( 1985?) and moved to San Diego. He retained one old guy from the old place. All in all there were 17 employees at my time there. 1987 they used computerized ( IBM XT) systems for audio testing (quality control). A lot of the Counterpoint production went to Europe.
Chris
some history of Counterpoint. It was a small company in Los Angeles when M.E. bought it ( 1985?) and moved to San Diego. He retained one old guy from the old place. All in all there were 17 employees at my time there. 1987 they used computerized ( IBM XT) systems for audio testing (quality control). A lot of the Counterpoint production went to Europe.
Chris
Hi Chris,
I had a sense that it was a small company. Most of the people I dealt with were really good, no complaints there. I never did deal with M.E. directly, but he was at war with the engineers at the time. I suspect he would not have liked our conversations as I sided with the engineers.
I became involved after two reps for Counterpoint came to me individually and asked if I would help with warranty service. I knew them both, and they were highly respected. We are still in contact today. So I accepted and it didn't take long to figure out where the problems were. I was flying on my own for service as far as figuring things out were concerned. Same for some parts. Those awful National tubes were something else, and New Sensor had recently brought out Sovtek (vastly superior). I recommended them to my contacts at Counterpoint and they quickly changed over to those. I feel bad about it now, because I think they took Mike Mathews for some $$ when they went down. Mike did not deserve that. They owed me, that's for sure.
So you left before I began dealing with them. I'm not going to ask, but we can move this to PM or email if you want Chris. I think your story is interesting, and I would like to fill in the gaps and understand them better. All I have are informed guesses and assumptions.
Best, Chris
I had a sense that it was a small company. Most of the people I dealt with were really good, no complaints there. I never did deal with M.E. directly, but he was at war with the engineers at the time. I suspect he would not have liked our conversations as I sided with the engineers.
I became involved after two reps for Counterpoint came to me individually and asked if I would help with warranty service. I knew them both, and they were highly respected. We are still in contact today. So I accepted and it didn't take long to figure out where the problems were. I was flying on my own for service as far as figuring things out were concerned. Same for some parts. Those awful National tubes were something else, and New Sensor had recently brought out Sovtek (vastly superior). I recommended them to my contacts at Counterpoint and they quickly changed over to those. I feel bad about it now, because I think they took Mike Mathews for some $$ when they went down. Mike did not deserve that. They owed me, that's for sure.
So you left before I began dealing with them. I'm not going to ask, but we can move this to PM or email if you want Chris. I think your story is interesting, and I would like to fill in the gaps and understand them better. All I have are informed guesses and assumptions.
Best, Chris