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Don’t buy used McCormack DNA 1990s amps

This is a public service announcement.  There are some yahoos on other sites selling 1990s McCormack DNA amps, sometimes at ridiculous prices.  While they’re great amps, and I happily owned a DNA 0.5 RevA for 20 years, they’re all gonna fatally fail.  Why?  Because their input board is at the end of its useful life, and when it fails your amp is dead and not repairable by anyone — not even SMcAudio.  It’s a boat anchor.  The only option is to sell it for scraps or get an SMcAudio upgrade that’ll cost around $2000.  Given my love of my amp I chose to do full upgrades given what else I could’ve gotten for the same same price and just got it back and will forward thoughts if anyone cares.  But the purpose of this post is to warn off any prospective buyers of a circa 1990s DNA amp that it’ll fatally fail soon, so unless you get a great price and plan on doing the SMcAudio upgrades just avoid these amps on the used market.  You’ve been warned. 

soix
soix OP
11,249 posts
 

Well, I had a good conversation with Pat this morning and it appears it would be unfair to malign him or SMC audio over this incident. It looks like this was probably more the result of a miscommunication with a seldom-used outside sales person that deviated from his normal "direct-to-consumer" sales approach.

@fishagedone Hey, all I did is call you out on something that just didn’t sound right That’s all so don’t make it more than that. As you’ve now admitted you were mistaken and that’s fine — it happens to all of us at one time or another My goal was not to belittle you at all but rather to challenge your account of events because on the surface they didn’t make sense given my experience with the company That’s it. As for @rubicon15 you’re basically a baby here and nothing you say means anything to me so don’t even bother.

 

fishagedone
45 posts
 

I did not admit to any "mistake". There was a miscommunication that was subsequently clarified, and I don't see the need to assign blame or judgment on anyone since we've since corrected the issue.

devinplombier
1,677 posts
 

Being irritating is not the same as being wrong.

 

wturkey's avatar
wturkey
871 posts
 

Current owner of an SMC modified DNA-1 here. Works great to this day. 

soix OP
11,249 posts
 

@wturkey  Just be aware that if your amp has the original input board it’s very likely to fail at some point.  Hope yours holds on for a long time. 🤞

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