Primare SPA21 HELP


hi all~

when i worked for magnolia home theater before they discontinued the primare spa21, i purchased a few of them for a really great price!  after about 10 years, one by one each one started to fail[with different problems... channels not working, one won't power on, etc.].  

at the time, i purchased all three and thought if i ever had a problem, i have a backup!  now all three have issues to each of them.. and finding someone locally to service these has been extremely hard.  after talking to sumiko audio, the repair specialist they recommended to send them to is located in washington.  i am left deciding if i should ship three extremely heavy units to be repaired (shipping to, diag fee+parts+repair, shipping back to myself)... which will probably be in the $300-$400/range each i am guessing after the phone call.

my first thought is they are great... but a $1200 investment into 10+ year old technology, which doesn't have any hdmi even.  

should i chalk this up to i have got my worth out of them and move on to something newer or repair?  thanks
meadeltd

Showing 1 response by auxinput

I would agree with akg_ca. Having 3 of those units fail with 10 years tells me that the designers of this Primare did not use the best internal components. These could be things like using lesser grade/quality capacitors, using capacitors at the edge or over the voltage rating. Using resistors of very low wattage ratings. Etc. Since they all failed with different things, even if you repaired them, I would put the reliability of the repaired items pretty low. Other things would likely to fail. Unless you had the repair shop do a complete replacement of all the electrolytic capacitors (using premium grade like NIchicon KG/KW), I wouldn’t put much faith into a temporary repair job. I have seen very well engineered equipment (such as Krell) last for 12-15 years before items started failing.

Using under-rated parts is something that does happen in the industry.  The PS Audio P300 power conditioner/regenerator actually had undersize capacitors in its main power supply.  I believed they used 50V caps in a power supply that has something like 60-63V of DC.  The caps would dry out and wear out really fast.  This is a known problem with the P300.

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