Ebay amp...need help

[Mothra]

I bid on, and won a Sony TA-N55ES 2 channel amplifier. This is my first foray into separates and wanted to start off with something cheap.

Anyway, I received it today and hooked it up to my Marantz using pre-outs. While it sounds pretty damn good at a med-high volume, at lower volumes, the left channel drops out?? If I crank it back up, the left side matches the right's output. Any idea what the hell is going on? Does it need a cleaning perhaps??

I know this probably wouldn't be most of you guys' first amp choice. But, the price was right, and I wanted to start off easy money-wise. At the higher levels, it definitely works my Monitor 10's a lot harder than my Marantz receiver.

Thanks for any help,
Mothra

[Early B.]

Gotta start by isolating the problem.

What setting do you have the gain control on the amp? (Probably should remain on the highest setting)

Check your speaker cables and interconnects. What happens if you reverse the speakers? Reverse the interconnects?

[Mothra]

Thanks for the reply Early...

I played around a bit last night, and this is what I've found:

The attenuation knob is dead center, indent. This is what the manual advises as a starting point. This particular amp has terminals for 2 sets of speakers, "A" and "B". The "A" set is the one that seems to have problems on the left channel. When I hook up to the "B" terminals, all is well. The drifting of the left side never happens.

I have tried using "A" and swapping left and right speaker cables, but it always effects the left side, never the right.

Does this help at all? Could it be that the left "A" terminals are dirty?

I was using a cheap set of interconnects, never tried reversing them. Although if the "B" terminals work fine, wouldn't this eliminate the interconnects as a source of the problem. I'm going to p/u a better set locally today at noon.

Thanks,
Mothra

[danger boy]

the left channel may be going out on the amp.. needing some innards replaced. i got an amp that needed a cap or something replaced like you describe. and now it's fine. was a cheap fix. and they cleaned it out. works great again.