amp I bought 3 days ago not powering on - electrical engineer advice wanted

As someone who enjoys a variety of used and new, it's been my experience that the occasional used piece has an issue. Hum, buzz, 20 years of hard labor, or environmental insult.. The piece may be worth a trip to the factory if they still have parts, or to a competent technician with some experience with the brand or the design.

One can have a string of bad luck, or simply enjoy the puzzle and the troubleshooting that follows. Sometimes there are newer parts that are more than just "to spec" that are worth savoring. 

I'm just back from a friend's house where we hooked up his newly repaired REL subwoofer. That system also has a repaired Benchmark dac, running just great. It was nice to hear the Benchmark integrated and the Harbeth C7ES-3s singing with the sub, once everything was hooked up and running.

I believe he'd had a power surge or a nearby lightning strike, and this was the successful culmination after a bad luck journey. His system lives on.

@goodlistening64 

Thank you!

I understand some of it. It's very educational! 

1) when I unhook the speakers, it ALWAYS turns on

2) I opened it, no leakage, or visible damage. 

First I would like to make progress with this before I think about another amp but thank you!

@ervikingo 

I don't think I am the unluckiest. I like to try a fair amount of new (used) amps so it's part of the game that I will buy old (once pricey) equipment with some parts nearing the end of their life. Is this a good strategy? Probably not the best. Also "pricey" for me is over a $1000 so that explains the other half, buying from limited funds will lead to bad decisions and "just hoping". The third half is that I am not good with keeping things in perfect shape although I do the best I can with audio. 

@zarf

 exactly, I am not complaining.  It's unfortunate to have to deal with broken equipment but still, I am happy to have enjoyed so many different gear and learned a lot. 

If it doesn't start when speakers are hooked up because it goes into protection mode, but does start when there are no speakers hooked up, try hooking up one speaker to try it to nail it down to see which L or R channel is bad. 

Then, if you find one channel to be "good", switch to the other channels speaker wire to see if it may just be the speaker wire, or the wire is touching something in the path, or you have mistakenly reversed red/black. 

It is also possible one of your speakers is damaged, which could cause the protection mode, so don't forget to rule that out at some point.