Future AU-11000 Rebuild

Sriskie

Well-Known Member
One of these showed up on kijiji last spring with a crappy picture for FREE! Obviously their inbox exploded but I managed to get it for what I considered to be a fair price. I turns out they picked it up off the curb and he didn't know what he'd found, but figured it out pretty quick. The guy wasn't familiar with this stuff and couldn't get it to work. I'm always looking for worthy winter projects and love rebuilding Sansuis of this era so I took the plunge. Somewhere along the line somebody decided to stand it up on it's back and pinched the power cord so I just put it away for later.

Sadly some one thought it might look better if they added some custom touches to the top with a fork. I don't share their vision so a repaint was necessary.

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I chemically stripped all of the covers and resprayed with Rust-Oleum Satin Black and Hammered Dark Bronze, I'm happy with the results, despite not being able to save the block diagram.

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While I had it apart I repaired the power cord and did a little preliminary testing. After checking the fuses I plugged into the DBT and threw the switch. 100w bulb dimmed and relay clicked....hmmm. Bias and DC offset looked acceptable so I hooked it up and got decent sound on Aux.. Nice. Volume and balance pots scratch when turned but quite a lot of disassembly is required to get at them so that's as far as I'm going for now.

It looks like a worthy project for when the weather turns cold. My question is, does anybody have a BOM for this series? I know about the pre-driver upgrade thanks to Dr*audio as well as a few other Sansui gotchas to keep an eye out for. I'm more concerned with choosing the correct capacitor brand type. I've restored a couple of BA 2000s so my records would help up to a certain point but there's quite a bit more to deal with here. A good list for any in this series, 9900(A) or 11000(A) would help. Thanks.
 
Sriskie - good catch on the AU-11000 - brill job on the respray of top covers...and although you weren't able to save the block diagram on the top cover - I prefer it just it plain black - looks fresh
Do hope you document your full build here when you get going on the internals
 
Thanks mroboto and AUD101.

What LBPete said in mroboto's thread about Sansui not using any special capacitors does make sense to me. My very first restoration was a AU-7900 and not knowing where the signal path actually was, I simply selected "audio grade" capacitors for everything. I still have the amp and it's excellent. My Onkyo Tx-4500 was recapped using my best guess utilizing whatever I had on hand and the sound was greatly improved. That being said, I like the idea of getting the capacitor that's best suited for each application. I've done a few restorations using BOMs published by expert members here and I liked it. Off the top of my head I think of the lists for the Marantz 2325, Pioneer SX-950, and AU-717. These lists spell out which cap the author feels is best for each application. I've become an adept parts changer but do not have the education to understand all of the circuits. These lists gives me the peace of mind that I'm restoring these units as well as I can. This unit looks very clean and unmolested inside. I'm not overly concerned with trying to improve the original design, but it deserves the best I can do.
 
Great find! The AU-11000 is one of Sansui's finest. Please post the serial number for the database. Click on the link in my signature block.

- Pete
 
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