FS: Piece of Maplin history – MA 310 ‘A Very High Quality 40W Stereo Amplifier'

[Flibble]

I got this from a very nice guy who was giving up electronics and having a clear out, he’d had it from new (about 30 years ago!) and never got round to finishing it off. When I got it there were a few minor probs (dodgy joints on power PCB, bridged track on one of the input boards, wrong resistor value on one of the tone boards and some dodgy wiring between the pots and tone boards), also the amp boards were shot and all the power wiring between the power boards, caps, fuses and amps boards was missing. I sorted all this out (and made all the mains wiring safe! Currently has a blue light behind the red the filter which makes it purple, but at least you’re not risking your life taking the lid off with it plugged in…) I had a couple of the same amp boards from a project I made in school so they went in and now it’s working great (no crackle from the pots, all knobs and buttons doing the right things as far as I can tell). I should point out that since it was only finished a couple of weeks back its been played for about 1 hour in the past 30 years . The amp boards were re-capped with new electrolytics and wima reds (polystyrene caps were left in) fairly recently, and some resistors swapped for matching ones. I didn’t bother wiring up those two smaller amps for headphones but I think they’re both working fine and the wiring is there (just tidied out of the way).

I’ve got the original paper instructions, I’ve put them online for posterity here and the Maplin mag article for the 50 watts amps is here.

I got it for a project and now it’s finished I’ve too many other projects and not enough space so it needs to go. I’d really like to see it go to someone who’d appreciate it and not take it apart for bits If I could get £40 for it (to cover the build cost of an ESP Project 101 ) that would be really awesome, otherwise make me an offer. The thing is really really heavy so it’s going to cost about £15 to courier it UK mainland, payment would have to be paypal or cash on collect, PM or reply if you're interested. The black bits in the knobs are just black paper and two fell off . I've not managed to find any mention of this amp anywhere on the internet, I guess it pre-dates mainstream web!

Cheers, Dan.