Throughly disappointed with my new Yamaha A-3000 Integrated.......

My A-S3000 started shutting down a couple of weeks ago. It went into protection mode a week ago and has remained there. I called Yamaha and they are sending me a box so I can ship it to a repair center in NY. Hopefully it will function properly again. I'd just started using a pre amp with the unit, not sure what caused the problem.

Update on my A-S3000 that went into protection mode: After going through everything the manual suggested the next step was to call customer service per the manual recommendation. I was completely blown away with Yamaha's customer service!!! After discussing what happened, they told me they were sending me a new box and shipping label. My wife threw out my box while I was away on a business trip several months before I noticed it was missing. The repair shop performed a factory reset and tested the unit for 10 days! They were unable to find anything wrong with it after testing all functions. They were great as well, emailing me every couple of days to ask questions and apprise me of their testing. The unit came back to me without a single scratch or mark on it! It has been working flawlessly during the past week. All it needed was a factory reset. It would have been nice to have the instructions on how to perform that in the manual.

The only thing I can think of that might have caused the problem was that I had taken the amp to a high end store a week before the problem occurred. I took it there to compare hearing it with a Prima Luna preamp versus Prima Luna pre/power amp and Audio Research tube power amp. During one of the connection changes the sales person forgot to turn the system off and there was a loud pop. My amp shut off but he reset the power switch and it turned back on and continued to perform.

The Yamaha/Prima Luna preamp combo sounded amazing! Sonically it was close between the PL pre/power but I'd give the nod to the Prima Luna combo, mainly due to triode mode. However the Yamaha had greater power. The Yamaha/PL pre sounded much better than the PL pre/Audio Research tube power amp, it wasn't even close. I forget the model ARC but he said the price of it was 12k. I didn't purchase anything that day. I bought a reconditioned DYNA PAS-3X tube preamp a couple of weeks prior to going to the high end store. After returning home and having the system on for a couple of hours the amp turned off during two separate listening sessions. I reset the power switch and it continued to perform until turning it off several hours later both times. The next time I used the system, the amp turned on and immediately turned off and was in protection mode.

The PAS-3X/Yamaha combo sounds awesome! It is quiet but not as quiet as the Prima Luna. The PAS-3X is a nice interim component as well as extremely affordable. It has two phono inputs which is perfect for my stereo and mono tables. I'm running vintage Great Britain Mullard tubes in the phono stage, German Telefunken in the line stage and a vintage Holland Amperex Bugle Boy for the rectifier tube.

I can't say enough positive things about my experience with Yamaha's customer service, United Radio's service and UPS shipping!