Me, Dec 30th, 2014:
So it was time to give the SE-A5 that I bought from KK a while back some loving attention.
I had not even yet switched the SE-A5 on yet, but I abhorred those crappy speaker terminals, one of which was broken. Don't worry, I knew about it prior to purchase and one could simply have used the "Remote" terminals, maar nou ja!
I figured it would be a reasonably quick job, probably an hour or two at most, but more about that later!
So I set about removing the old terminals and the easiest way to do so was to simply remove the whole Audio board, 4 screws and a couple of plug-in cables. The thicker output cables were hard-wired but no problem to simply swing the board to the best position for working on it.
This pic depicts the old board as well as the new binding posts and an ali-plate that I cut, drilled & punched to suit the new holes, as the old ones were far too large and the spacing was about 2-3mm out.
I toyed with the idea of spraying the ali-plate black but in the end did not bother as it was practically completely out of site anyway.
To connect the PCB to the new binding posts I used some left-over hook-up wire that I have used for all my home-built amps, bought about 40 years ago when copper wire was cheap enough to buy 100m rolls of every colour known to man, and still doing good service. Copper was copper in those days! I decided to fit lugs to fit the binding posts so that the Audio board can be easily removed in future, if necessary, rather than solder directly on to the new binding posts.
But now the first problem arose - the left pair of bonding posts snagged against the plastic cover of the one speaker protection relay, that Technics conveniently put there just to mess me around. So I had to cut both solder tips off the two left binding posts and then also had to saw the one threaded bolt shorter as well.
Note in the pic above, the Audio board is laying to the left of where it normally rests.
More fun: The little solder tip I cut off jumped into the great abyss of the darkest depths of the amp towards the power supply, which is just a maze of thick wiring looms and I could not find it. So I stripped the rear panel and removed it, unscrewed the fuse block, the voltage selector, the small transformer (or choke ?) hidden under the maze of wires, still could not find the li'l bugger. The pic below shows the inside of the amp, the mass of power supply wires lays beneath the black plastic cover in front of the mains transformer
Gave up on the looking for the tiny little brass doody that was messing me around and started assembling the amp, Every thing fitted perfectly; I was a bit concerned that the base of the ali plate might catch on the top of the PCB but I had left sufficient clearance so no problem there. And then, as I was placing the Audio PCB in its correct place, I found that stupid little brass solder pip that I had cut off stuck on one of the Audio Board heatsinks! Tiny thing, smaller than the head of a matchstick, so no photo but it was relocated to the dustbin.
The rear inner view of the new binding posts:
Note the top right (well, when working from the back of the amp, it was the left one!) binding post solder tip removed (this was the errant one) and the post below it had to be shortened and only one nut to hold the terminal lug and fasten the post.
And that was that, the job took a while longer than planned because firstly the disappearance, and subsequent reappearance, of that tiny solder pip that committed hari-kari inside the amp cost me about an hour of unnecessary stripping of the amp, and secondly, a Windhoek Laager called my name. Finished the job this morning and switched on, all seems good but have still to connect it to some speakers. The meter lights seem to not be working so that will be the next job.
Yes, a keeper!
-F_D