NZ made vintage amp - interesting?

Markoneswift

Markoneswift

Quartz locked n ready to rock
I rescued this interesting home-grown amp from an op shop the other day. It's a very early SS effort and has one of the biggest capacitors ive ever seen stashed under the main board.

I'm wondering if anyone can see any similarities in the topology with any other mainstream amps of the era - it was common for electronics in NZ to be imported in kit sets and assembled here back in the day. The unit has a mix of caps fitted with quite a few Elnas dotted around. The outputs are Motorola SJ parts. The case is nice and the controls are all solid brushed aluminium.

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That PCB looks too nice for a lot of the local early NZ gear I've seen mate.

Im guessing this was a kit of some kind, with the PCB being fabricated overseas and someone imported it to make it here.

The sticker (or any other printing) on the PCB provide any clues?

You able to post pics of the front and back panels?
 
The manufacturer is Audio Research of Auckland. Model is an SA3500 - I'll put some pics up later. The back panel is entirely 5 pin DIN inputs and the speaker terminals are those two pin type (known as Pioneer or something maybe?)
 
Oh yep - this is the NZ vintage "Audio Research" - not to be confused with the high-end manufacturer of tube gear!

how does it sound?
 
slimecity said:
Oh yep - this is the NZ vintage "Audio Research" - not to be confused with the high-end manufacturer of tube gear!

how does it sound?
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Well, so far not bad at all actually. I've only got it rigged up to a pair of test speakers (which are 4 ohm, despite the '8 ohm minimum' warning on the back...) and a Thorens TD-150 (because it's got a DIN connector on it). The pots are scratchy as hell but I've applied a liberal dose of cleaner into those. I'm thinking of doing a recap just for fun, but I hate trying to replace axial caps because they're hard to find without using online suppliers and waiting for delivery. Maybe I'm just impatient !!

The Leak is still going strong though, so that's a plus :-)
 
A recap could be worth doing actually.

Interesting use of axial caps throughout the unit......

Yea those Leaks are still some of my favourite amps......
 
I recapped this unit in one evening - just finished it. Pretty straight forward, all common cap values (so more likely a Jap design in origin, rather than British??) and not too many of them. I'm just running it in now and it's sounding pretty sweet. Here's a few more pics - sorry about the rubbish lighting, it's late here.....


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Far left of first image - there's an orange 47uf 63v cap. That's an original, I know I didn't swap it out. The local supplier where I purchased my BOM parts only had three of those 43uf/63V parts so I had to leave one lonely old cap in there for now. I'm not clever enough to decide whether I can use a higher sub so it stays for now :-)
 
Binkman said:
G'eve mate; nice and decent cosmetics, too. You can up voltages on caps ( if they fit.)
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Yes I have gone up in voltage on all of them but didn't have a 47uf cap available in any rating. I will sub that one next time I go to Jaycar for more bits.
 
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