My Amp is Broken - Not Sure What to Do - Any Recommendations?

Take ARC to task on the repair if no satisfaction  give Tom a call @ Northridge Electronics in Simi Valley Ca.   This is an old school tech who really knows his stuff and is a repairman pure and simple with no funny stuff about boutique cures or similar ilk.   

I have a Thermaltrak equipped HD220 myself and Audio Research would ABSOLUTELY refuse to return my repeated calls AND repeated emails.  The good old days of Leonard and Kalvin are gone.

A $25/hr tech... GOOD LUCK finding one who knows what the 5 pins of the thermaltrak devices are about.   

I agree, this is lousy customer service. If I did buy a new amp it wouldn’t be an ARC. Their power amps are prone to failure. They do sound good when working though

Parts go obsolete, I've had to run down a lot of obsolete parts, some companies have made products using discontinued parts, knowing before their production run that the parts had been discontinued!

If you really liked that amp, I'd contact Roy Mottram at tubes4hifi.com, he has designed many tube amps, preamps, and phono preamps. You could also contact Don Sachs, but it's unlikely that he'll do repairs, last I knew he was way behind in making his own amps and preamps. Anyway, those guys are big on tube circuit design and may have already worked on your problem for someone else.

Oh, there is one other option I could suggest. Vandersteens are not the most articulate speakers out there, so you can probably procrastinate doing a bridge rectifier mod to it, but there is a PS Audio 200C amplifier on eBay right now. I think he has come down at least 100, and it may be 100 and free shipping, I don't recall if he was throwing in shipping or not initially. $700 is still a little high for that amp, but it will drive the Vandys with no problems. I have a friend who is borrowing one of my 2 PS amps for his Vandy 2CE Signatures and he loves it. Obviously owning 2 of them, you know that for a transistor amplifier I really like them for the money. BTW, I would try offering him $550, and even that may be high for a stock amp, but no way would I pay more than 600 shipped, and make sure it's insured, clumsy delivery people can destroy an amp with the monster coil it has if they drop it the wrong way.

I think the slew rate is a crazy 400V per millisecond, my tube amp is 60? It owns speakers, back in the day it was one of only a few that could really drive the big Appoge speakers, which went down to 2 ohms. You will fry the amp if you plug or unplug your preamp or speakers while it's turned on though,  and the relay buzzes. A lot of folks think it's the coil, but the relay chatters, if you go that way, there is a company that makes a direct replacement for about 60 dollars. It's one of those, if it bothers you things. It's worth it because you would have to spend a ton to get another transistor amp that sounds as good, much less that can drive a load like the 200C or 200CX.

The other thing is, like most amps of its age, the bridge rectifiers suck! So at some point you really should replace them with Fred's, Hexfreds, or Stealth diodes, I prefer to use IXYS Freds from Partsconnexion, or Michael Percy Audio.  Anyone who can solder should be able to easily replace them for you. It wouldn't hurt to add some nice bypass caps to the power supply. One of mine has a TX2575 resistor on the input, and I am probably going to go through and replace all the resistors in it. I am a detail freak, it is just a shade dark, but like the old Forte F44 preamp, it's actually a pretty awesome viscerally pleasing sound, which is why I have never gone that far with one. I have replaced the caps on the boards with Black Gates, but the bridge rectifiers are what it really needs to fully come into its own. I have been told that some Levenson amps can really control speakers, I can't speak to that, but the PS amp owns what ever I have thrown at them.