[Rod_S]

I couldn't wait until after work so I called Bryston and spoke with Mike and we are going to try an in the field swap of the LED boards. Ideally one would just solder a new LED onto the board directly to ensure proepr alignment but I'm not comfortable doing any soldering so we'll try a swap of the board. There's no guarantee everything will line up but I'm willing to give it a shot. If it doesn't work I can simply send just the faceplates back to have the change done at HQ. A thank you to Mike for offering some alternatives.

[1ZIP]

I imagine this has been asked somewhere… but I'm lazy…how does a DIY dress plate change affect the warranty?

[Rod_S]

I asked and my understanding is it doesn't however....if you screw something up and cause damage and want it repaired you will be charged for the cost of repair. This seems a very reasonable approach.

If this was anything other than an unsrew, remove, screw back in excersise I definitely wouldn't even being attempting it. Others of course may be much braver or on the flip side simply avoid any such risk and just have Bryston do it.

[Rod_S]

Well the amps arrived today and I also got word today that the LED assemblies are on their way. Since I had to order interconnects for the amps those are still probably a couple weeks off thus I won't be able to hook the amps up until then. I guess providing I am successful in swapping the LED assemblies that would mean by the time the cables arrive everything will be all set and I won't have any downtime.

[Rod_S]

Getting closer now, the LED assemblies arrived yesterday. Just looking at them it doesn't appear to daunting, it looks more or less plug and play. There appears to be 2 screw holes on each assembly which are probably the mounting positions then of course the wiring harness. Now I'm just wating for my father to come into town with what he says is a torx screwdriver set. That should be on Monday.

Here's a shot of the amps awaiting hookup. That's my 4B-SST C Series on top that I'm putting back into service. These will replace my 6B-SST C Series which I'll probably sell. Once I get my XLR cables and get the LED's in I'll put the amps into their new homes.

[Rod_S]

Is it safe to turn on the amps without having anything connected to the inputs and outputs? I still don't have my long interconnects but will need to test the LED's tomorrow and would rather not have to try to place the amps in a position where I can access the cables for my 28's.

[Rod_S]

So... one amp is done, it went very smoothly however the other which happened to be the 1st one we did, not so much

We got it apart no problem and while putting the faceplate back on we were completely focused on getting the screw holes lined up without scratching the faceplate and we took our eyes off the ribbon cable from the LED assembly and it went in between the faceplate and chassis and folded over on itself causing a crease across the cable. We caught it before we tightened down the screws but still to late to stop a crease from happening. When the amp was powered up there were 2 problems. The LED isn't coming on but more scary it's not powering up properly at all. It makes a very quiet sound not the distinct and rather loud set of sounds normally associated with the soft start circuitry kicking in on Bryston amps. The thing I'm mad at myself about is I did not power cycle the amp after I received it so I knew it worked properly before I did the LED swap so it's quite possible it was damaged during shipping and would have done the same thing I'm experiencing now. No way of knowing that now though.

So in communicating with Mike the crease in the ribbon cable may not have broken the cable so it may still be fine and just wasn't secured properly so this would be an easy check plus I now have 2 additional LED assembles to use (the original one from this and the other amp) so they can be used to test if we broke the new assembly, if they don't work then something else is going on, if they do, the new blue assembly is damaged.

As for the power issue it's also possible we didn't properly secure the 3 ribbon cables and/or didn't get the pins lined up properly when re-attaching the heat sinks. We did notice it was easy to miss aligning the pins, on a few attempts the top pins ended up going under their associated female counterparts on the main chassis thus missing the target entirely.

So again easy to check right, well...no

In taking off the cover to perform the visual check one screw head completely stripped and it wasn't even in very tight from when we had the cover off the 1st attempt, we were so careful not to overtighten. So now we can't get the cover off and can't get the screw to turn enough to expose the edge of the head which would allow us to simply use some plyers to turn the screw.

Very frustrating and disappointing to say the least.

We can try drilling the screw, aside from that the amp has to be sent off to Bryston

[Rod_S]

The amps are now up and running and adding the 7's, even though these are for the surrounds it made an immediate difference. There's much more weight and smoothness than I expected and better integration with my fronts which I also wasn't expecting.

I think this is probably once again an example of the sound differences between Class A and Class AB, like with my 28's the 7's are probably staying in the Class A region more often than the 6 was for a large portion of my listening and that's what I'm experiencing.

Whatever is going on I'm liking it

[Grit]

So, what amps did you have, and what did you replace them/it with?  6B SST2 to 7B SST2s?

And on what speakers?

Just curious. I've been considering the new cubed series, and debating replacing my 6 with 3 7s and moving the 4 to surround duty.

[Rod_S]

So, what amps did you have, and what did you replace them/it with?  6B SST2 to 7B SST2s?

And on what speakers?

Just curious. I've been considering the new cubed series, and debating replacing my 6 with 3 7s and moving the 4 to surround duty.

Went from a 6B-SST C-series to the 7B-SST2's. I'm now using my 4B-SST C-Series for the center until I can move over to a 7B-SST2 for that as well. My speakers are B&W 800 D2 series. The 7's power 802's, the 4 powers a HTM2 and my 28's power 800's.