"Trevor Wilson" wrote in message ...

A lifetime ago, I was service manager for Marantz Australia (ca. 1975 ~
1980). One of my favourite Marantz amps was the 1070. Nice size,
sound quality, price and power, but most of all, incredibly reliable. The
damned things hardly ever broke down. The confidential data from
Superscope was that they exhibited a 0.5% failure rate within the (3
year) warranty period. Very impressive. Anyway, one landed on my bench.
The customer complained of a slight buzz in both channels. I fired it up
and immediately noted severe asymmetry at high(ish) power levels. I
pulled the base plate off and spotted a wire that someone had poorly
soldered to one of the main filter caps.

My problem exactly!

Would that all equipment were that reliable. The rep of one of the leading
high-end audio manufacturers told me that the company had trouble getting
reliable solder joints. He didn't explain the nature of the problem.

I was told the Fosgate unit was hand-soldered, apparently because Jim Fosgate
didn't trust wave soldering. Hand soldering has the advantage of visual
inspection as each joint is soldered.