Over the years I've found that the people I trust the least are the ones that claim to be the best in their fields. The experts. The professionals. The ones that know it all and have seen everything.

There's always a chance to learn new tricks, so I'm going to post something you probably won't see many repair shops show off. I'm going to show you a mistake. This GK200MV came in for a simple fuse holder replacement. The amp had been around the block and the old one had snapped off. Simple. A slam dunk repair! While I was inside I noticed that the power transformer and a few components on the top side of the board were not original. The owner mentioned that he had some work done in the past. No big deal. The work was neatly done and looked legit.

A few weeks later, the amp came back to me with a blown fuse. When powered up the transformer hummed so loud it shook the amp. I disassembled the PCB and found that the underside was covered in a patchwork of previous repairs, most likely two or three layers of work done over a span of years. The rectifier was dead. The output transistors were dead, and none of them were original. The board was physically burned in places. Components were soldered to the underside, and jumpers ran across lifted and missing solder pads. There were spots where corrosion was slowly lifting the circuit away from the board itself. Had I seen any of this the first time I would have declined the repair. With enough money and time anything is fixable. But in this case my opinion was that this was an amp best left to die. It might make sound again, but nothing was going to make it reliable. So what did I learn? Look closer, dig deeper. Don't take anything for granted, and make sure that even your mistakes are valuable.