Six months - the wait is part of the journey

[miner]

Well, I now have about 12 hrs on the amp and I am pleased with what I am hearing so far. No harshness right out of the box. Similar to FreddieFerric’s pucker moment when his left channel sentry monitor kicked in, my right channel did the same at about after 8 hrs of use. This happened following a speaker cable change from WW Equinox 8 to WW Eclipse 8 (thank you Ivan). After installing the Ec8 on the 4 ohm tap I turned up my volume from 25% to 40%, the amp shut down and the four signal tubes on the right channel started to blink red - the sentry monitor kicked on. I powered everything down for a minute, turned back on and same issue reappeared. I tried the cables on the 8 ohm tap and all was fine. I IM’d Ivan to discuss and he was quick to offer to send new cables after our phone conversation. After our call I decided to try the 4 ohm tap again but switch the right and left cable to start the diagnosis. Sure enough as I increased the volume the amp shut down and the left channel signal tubes were blinking red - hmmmm, must be a bad speaker cable. After contacting McIntosh it was mentioned my speakers (Sf EA3) dip down to 3.3 ohms at 280Hz and using the 8 ohm tap would not be healthy for the amp. My next test planned was to move the cables to the 4 ohm tap and switch the connection at the speaker end to narrow down if possibly a speaker issue. Before doing that I decided to try one more time on the 4 ohm tap and the shut down did not happen even at -10dB (80%). I immediately reached out to Ivan to discuss the results and we spoke for 15 mins to try to come to a reasonable solution for this anomaly. He graciously offered to allow me to keep the replacement cables for a few days in case the shut down happened again. In the meantime I had the amp playing music for 3 hrs yesterday evening without a hitch. Hopefully the gremlin has moved on to the next ‘hood. BTW, the audio improvement moving from the Eq8 to the Ec8 (basically, up one level) is astounding. More heft in the base, much so I am not sure I will require a REL CS sub.

Many thanks to Ivan, FreddieFerric, and McIntosh for guiding me through this diagnostic fix. Still don’t have an answer what caused this.

[FreddieFerric]

Keep us posted when the new Ec8's arrive. May be worth mentioning to check and make sure the connectors (spades or banana's) are screwed in nice and tight since they are interchangable. If one was a bit loose, that might have triggered the SM circuit.

[Formerly YB-2]

Good luck with your cables. Hope it was just a 'glitch'.

Just visited with Harry Weisfeld at VPI. While he was switching out the 'white noise' source on the Tannoy Canterburys (still being broken-in) we were listening to he said he wished he had a decent set of banana plugs to use rather than spades, which come loose. I could not agree more and think one of the best things about WW is their killer banana plugs. I use them at both ends of my Silver Eclipse speaker cables and they grip like no others. Never a question if something is not firmly seated.

[londonbridge]

Enjoy the new toy! Great tube amp. It should last for a long time. Your turntable looks amazing. I also love the tubes. Seduction of the tubes!!!

[miner]

I did check the spades before I installed the cables. A few were loose and the way the cables can be somewhat stiff I can see a spade becoming loose especially if the cable is twisted to get the spade to line up with the connection. I can see how cables could possibly naturally untwist and loosed a spade, but I may be reaching here. I may reach out to Ivan to order a set of bananas to have on hand.

[FreddieFerric]

FWIW, I use spades on the amp end and banana's on the speaker end. If the speaker connections on the 1502 would be horizontal rather than vertical I would use banana's all the way around.

[miner]

With the covers I had made to help with keeping the dust away.

[mcpaf76]

Beautiful amp!

[miner]

Originally Posted by FreddieFerric

FWIW, I use spades on the amp end and banana's on the speaker end. If the speaker connections on the 1502 would be horizontal rather than vertical I would use banana's all the way around.

I have ordered some bananas from Ivan, The Enabler.

[jfray]

If you need a sub I have a Rel G-1 I’m trying to figure out what to do with. Your system looks awesome!!!

Originally Posted by miner

Well, I now have about 12 hrs on the amp and I am pleased with what I am hearing so far. No harshness right out of the box. Similar to FreddieFerric’s pucker moment when his left channel sentry monitor kicked in, my right channel did the same at about after 8 hrs of use. This happened following a speaker cable change from WW Equinox 8 to WW Eclipse 8 (thank you Ivan). After installing the Ec8 on the 4 ohm tap I turned up my volume from 25% to 40%, the amp shut down and the four signal tubes on the right channel started to blink red - the sentry monitor kicked on. I powered everything down for a minute, turned back on and same issue reappeared. I tried the cables on the 8 ohm tap and all was fine. I IM’d Ivan to discuss and he was quick to offer to send new cables after our phone conversation. After our call I decided to try the 4 ohm tap again but switch the right and left cable to start the diagnosis. Sure enough as I increased the volume the amp shut down and the left channel signal tubes were blinking red - hmmmm, must be a bad speaker cable. After contacting McIntosh it was mentioned my speakers (Sf EA3) dip down to 3.3 ohms at 280Hz and using the 8 ohm tap would not be healthy for the amp. My next test planned was to move the cables to the 4 ohm tap and switch the connection at the speaker end to narrow down if possibly a speaker issue. Before doing that I decided to try one more time on the 4 ohm tap and the shut down did not happen even at -10dB (80%). I immediately reached out to Ivan to discuss the results and we spoke for 15 mins to try to come to a reasonable solution for this anomaly. He graciously offered to allow me to keep the replacement cables for a few days in case the shut down happened again. In the meantime I had the amp playing music for 3 hrs yesterday evening without a hitch. Hopefully the gremlin has moved on to the next ‘hood. BTW, the audio improvement moving from the Eq8 to the Ec8 (basically, up one level) is astounding. More heft in the base, much so I am not sure I will require a REL CS sub.

Many thanks to Ivan, FreddieFerric, and McIntosh for guiding me through this diagnostic fix. Still don’t have an answer what caused this.