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RE: Chinese made GL ECC83

Joe,

It has had an intermittent problem in the left phono channel for a while that behaved like a cracked solder joint. When cold I would get an occasional "ziz thump" out of that channel, but when things got good an hot the issue disappears. I figured if something that simple, any competent tech should be able to fix it, so I found a local shop and took it to them. They did find a couple of spots around the left phono 12AX7 socket (right where I thought they would) and repaired them. It was going to be a couple of days before I could get to the shop and pick it up, so they had it all hooked up and let it play there in the shop. The tech said he was enjoying the sound of it so much he even brought a bunch of his own recordings from home to play. On the second day running in the shop it exhibited another problem in the line section, which they investigated. They found a shorted resistor and a leaky diode. Without any schematics he was a little stumped. He was reluctant to just replace parts without fully understanding the circuit. I asked him to call CAT which he did. Ended up speaking with Ken Stevens for well over an hour. Turns out the failed parts are a common failure on a CAT of this age and Ken told him that there was an upgrade to fix the problem that involved several parts in the power supply as well as the failed components. The tech was to have emailed Ken and Ken was to send him the write-up of the repair. If my tech feels comfortable with the work to be done, he'll get the parts from Ken and complete the repair. If not, I'll pick it up and send it to CAT in New York. My take-away from all this: I should've sent the danged thing to Ken in the first place. Nothing against the shop/tech here, but from a time to repair standpoint I probably could easily have sent it to Ken and had it back by now.

Live and learn I guess ...


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  • RE: Chinese made GL ECC83 - Sondek 08:15:51 04/05/14 (0)

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