Help needed solving amplifier problem/mystery


Hi all,
I'm hoping to get some advice solving a mystery with sporadic amp performance... I'm using a Spectron Musician Hybrid 2 amplifier - 500 watts x 2 with PSB Gold i speakers, Denon 2900 CDP and a Promitheus Audio passive preamp. Also use a Panamax 5300 power conditioner and the Spectron is plugged directly into the wall. Generally I'm very happy with my "working man’s" 2-channel system. But periodically my right speaker works only very faintly where I barely get any sound - but I do hear very soft music – about 5% the volume of my other speaker. If I continue to play music for an hour or so the problem goes away and all is good. This happens every month or so and I can't figure it out. I've troubleshot/isolated the problem to the right channel of my Spectron amp (it's not the source cd player, speaker, speaker cable or ic cables, so I am deducing it is the amp). My Spectron is under warranty - I sent it in for repair and they could not find any problems with the amp. I did not have this problem again after receiving the amp back from Spectron (about a month ago now) until today. Any thoughts or suggestions as to my problem and how to fix it would be greatly appreciated!!

Many thanks!
canjo07
Any chance the speaker cables or interconnects on the right side of the amp working lose? I had a heavy interconnect cable work lose and it took me months troubleshooting the problem.
It kind of sounds like a bad component in the crossover of the right speaker. I had a pair of Linn speakers that did the same thing and drove me crazy. It ended up being a bad crossover.
You could try swapping speakers to see if the problem follows the speaker. But I suspect that you have an intermittently bad channel on your power amp. Send it back to Spectron and tell them to replace the guts for that channel...

-RW-
Lapierre, the speaker and ic cables are tightly connected. Mofimadness, I'd agree with you on the crossover, except when I swap speaker cables the problem moves to my left speaker. When I swap speaker cables and ic's, the problem stays with the right amp channel. thanks for the advice though!
Bad relay in the the amp. I had the exact same problem with one channel of my multi-channel amp. It took me a long time to isolate it to one channel of the amp. The channel would appear to go dead, but when I put my ear against the speaker I could still hear very low music. I sent it back to the manufacturer for repair and they had to cycle the power about 50 times before they could re-create the problem.
Thanks for the suggestions. The problem re-occurred this morning, so I think I will contact Spectron.
If you send the amp back for repair make it clear to them what it's doing and tell them to keep it until the problem rears it's ugly head.Intermitent problems are hard,but not impossible,to find.Just a thought.Good luck.
Canjo07, you speakers are OK. But I spotted something in one of your posts that sounded like a procedural error.

Swap the channels left for right at the input of your amp. Then wait for the problem- is it still in the same channel?

Yes=> amplifier
No=> preamp or cable, **or** input cable or source

I would not do anything else until you have answered this step!
Thanks all for the responses. Atmasphere, I did what you suggested and it is still the amp channel. Interesting note now though is 6 minutes after a cold start up the channel comes to life and everything works. I had not noticed this before. Btw, I've been in contact with Spectron and they are great to work with and a great company - I'm sending the amp to them today to troubleshoot and repair.