Hello & greetings to everyone,
I am brand new to the board and have a couple of questions regarding my MAC 1900 receiver. I recently had it gone through by a local factory authorized repair center. The repair shop replaced two caps, two transistors, repaired a cold solder joint and replaced all the light bulbs at my request. At any rate now it sounds great and really pulls those FM stations in nicely.
However I noticed that the left channel plays considerably louder than the right channel when the volume is set to my "normal", which is around 10 o' clock or so, listening level. At louder levels the difference between the two channels seems to become less noticeable.
I took the receiver back to the repair shop that did the work to ask them about this. The technician/owner brought me back to the test bench and played the receiver for me on a local FM station and he ran a signal through it. There seems to be about a 2.5 dB difference (which is I was told is very difficult to hear) at the level I normally have the volume set at. He told me that he could replace the pot with a brand new one that MacIntosh sends him but there is no guarantee that the new volume control pot would perform any better. In fact he told me that the new pots that McIntosh are sending them these days are sometimes even farther off on the "taper" than the current factory original one on my receiver. He does not recommend replacing the pot unless it is absolutely broken because it is "hit or miss" if the new one will solve the problem or not. Basically it is "not worth it" to use his words, to do the job. Moreover I was told the new replacement pots that McIntosh are currently supplying are completely sealed and therefore can't even be cleaned. They are made in Canada (not China) for what it's worth.
I called another local McIntosh authorized repair shop and they told me the same exact same thing regarding the volume control pot.
My questions are:
1) Is there anything that can be done to correct this, short of locating an New Old Stock (NOS) factory volume control pot?
2) Is this really correct, has anyone else on the board heard of this issue before?
3) Do I have to just live with this or is there some kind of "fix" that someone knows about?
I thought that McIntosh of all companies would have better QC on the replacement parts they are supplying.
Thanks in advance, any advice on this will be greatly appreciated!
Best regards,
Tim
Santa Clara, Ca
USA
