Hi everyone! This is my first post on this forum 🙂
I have recently been given a pair of quad 99 monoblocks.
Two questions:
1. The speaker terminals on one is kind of broke.
I am thinking of opening it and soldering a new pair of terminals.
I have soldered RCA cables before. That worked great.
Is attaching new speaker terminals doable för a beginner with basic soldering skills? I am kind of assuming it is very straightforward, just soldering wire to the terminal.
2:
Googling this site I found a member stating the following about Quad 99:
"I bought a new Quad 99 as a local shop here is selling for less then 500 USD. I hv solder a direct wire from the RCA input to the amplifier board, and eliminated the messy Quad link circuitry that killed the sound."
That member no longer seems to be active, but the post intrigued me. Just soldering a wire from one place to another doesn't seem that hard, and if it can improve the sound...
Does it sound like good/bad idea? And more importantly - would anyone on this board be willing to help me identify the points to solder when I open monoblocks?
thanks in advance,
Carl
Sweden
I have recently been given a pair of quad 99 monoblocks.
Two questions:
1. The speaker terminals on one is kind of broke.
I am thinking of opening it and soldering a new pair of terminals.
I have soldered RCA cables before. That worked great.
Is attaching new speaker terminals doable för a beginner with basic soldering skills? I am kind of assuming it is very straightforward, just soldering wire to the terminal.
2:
Googling this site I found a member stating the following about Quad 99:
"I bought a new Quad 99 as a local shop here is selling for less then 500 USD. I hv solder a direct wire from the RCA input to the amplifier board, and eliminated the messy Quad link circuitry that killed the sound."
That member no longer seems to be active, but the post intrigued me. Just soldering a wire from one place to another doesn't seem that hard, and if it can improve the sound...
Does it sound like good/bad idea? And more importantly - would anyone on this board be willing to help me identify the points to solder when I open monoblocks?
thanks in advance,
Carl
Sweden
If you go to HiFi Engine . com you can download the service manual and have a look to see what is involved.
Thank you, unfortunately hifiengine doesn't seem to have a service manual for the 99, only 909, maybe they are similar though. Though not sure I would be able to understand it...
Sound like horse****. Quad had enormous sales with a great reputation, although I've never heard of a 99. 303 and 404 mostly.
Your broken terminal block needs replaced. Look on stocking distributors as mouser, digikey, farnell, reichelt,
RS for pictures of terminal strips similar. Unless the device is a 1/4" phone jack or a speakon connector. Could be a dual banana jack with 3/4" spacing.
You'll need at least a 40 W iron to solder 16 ga wires to speaker capable terminals.
Wear safety glasses, solder can splash in the eye. Use rosin core solder, and the tin/lead solder reviled by bureaucrats in Belgium actually works the best if you don't have a E50000 wave solder machine. The bureaucrats want you to send everything used to the recycle center (EEE) and buy a new one , so they get their campaign contributions from big business.
Look at the good unit and make the bad unit look exactly the same. There should be a fat wire going to the back of the speaker connector, or really, two. One black from the ground and one red from the amp circuits.
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Bypassing the Quadlink became stylish for a while, on the grounds of minimalism, but it contains would you believe OP275 opamps, which makes it hard to believe in any improvement resulting.
The speaker posts are standard 4mm single, as you find in the places mentioned.
I'm atter a service manual as well and there certainly isn't one in any of the usual places.
The speaker posts are standard 4mm single, as you find in the places mentioned.
I'm atter a service manual as well and there certainly isn't one in any of the usual places.
The second question refers to the input Quad propriety links which were bypassed as they only work with Quads own special cabling .
As regards the output it is not hard to replace/re-solder output terminals unless they are special to Quad.
While the circuits are by the main (original English ) Quad designer the company was bought by a Chinese company residing in the UK who have their own international designers so later models are not by the original English designer, but so has much of British manufacturing been bought by the USA or China.
As regards the output it is not hard to replace/re-solder output terminals unless they are special to Quad.
While the circuits are by the main (original English ) Quad designer the company was bought by a Chinese company residing in the UK who have their own international designers so later models are not by the original English designer, but so has much of British manufacturing been bought by the USA or China.
Really? The circuits are the same but different? Which is it? Do late 99s use a different circuit from the originals? Evidence?
You are a bit too quick off the mark and have come to the wrong conclusion and you don't seem to understand I was quoting ----History ---- about the company.
Read it again I was commenting on the end of an era where the original designer of the circuit who was part of the original company parted ways when it was sold off to China who got their own design engineers in .
Where do I say "there are two designs" ?
This is an all too common happening condemned in old versions of EW/WW by many British Electronic/Electrical professional design engineers .
I'm aware of the history. We are speaking here of the Quad 99 which was designed over 20 years ago, and not by 'the original designer'. If there is no new design for it I fail to see the relevance of your comment.
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Likewise I too don't see the relevance of your criticism--where did I say the original designer didn't design the Quad 99 ?
While the original design was used it was an end to an era and new staff and faces were brought in.
By the way the hardware has been criticized for not being up to original standards .
I owned a Quad 303 + Quad 33 build quality was good standing up to much abuse ,the 303 was practically indestructible.
While the original design was used it was an end to an era and new staff and faces were brought in.
By the way the hardware has been criticized for not being up to original standards .
I owned a Quad 303 + Quad 33 build quality was good standing up to much abuse ,the 303 was practically indestructible.