Hi Zerosanity, you got a good buy on the A&R. I've just spent the last couple of days tinkering with the one I bought ages ago (£21 including a matching T21 tuner from a chap less than 4 miles away), and getting it to sound just right. I can honestly say it blows all the other amps I've heard (not a lot if I'm honest) out of the water when it comes to clarity and imaging. Mine is S/N 6965, so it's the second version like yours.
I'm running it with a pair of Mordaunt Short Festival II speakers (UK Ebay for £3.50 - bargain!!!) also from the early 80's, and it sounds magnificent. Even at low levels the bass sounds "real", rather than that artificial sound that a lot of modern gear has. And at higher levels the 35 watts sounds much stronger than the 55watts my late-90's Marantz amp claims to have...
I haven't changed any caps in mine yet, but the trim pots have been changed for nice 25-turn Cermet ones as per the article here
http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/nuukspot/decdun/a60mods.html - 40-turns would've been better, I know, but 25 turns were available easily and for sensible money. Either way sound has improved immensely.
I did try modding mine by swapping out the DIN sockets for more modern RCA's at the back, mounted in a small enclosure with jumpers to the circuit board - it sounded awful, so I reverted it back to the DIN sockets with a view to selling it on - but when I listened to it again with the DIN sockets reinstated I couldn't bare to let it go. The only mod I've really made now, is that the swapping in and out of the DIN sockets made the PCB tracks to the Aux input a little weak, so I cut them back, and soldered in a suitable level l-pad attenuator (12dB) for CD input right there on the circuit board. Just before I came on here I had Supertramp's Best Of... playing on CD through the amp, and sounding every bit like they were in the room
I plan on replacing the el-cheapo volume and tone pots for decent Alps ones at some point, because the volume selection at very low levels doesn't kick in equally, and like you ZS, I will change some if not all of the caps eventually, especially as this one takes a while to get warmed up (just occasionally the left channel takes a few seconds from cold before it kicks in properly, which I suspect to be a slowly dying cap - it's fine once warmed up), but other than that I can't honestly believe that anything below £500 of the modern crop of gear would sound any better.
Anyway, now that's my sales pitch for the A&R Cambridge A60 amplifier done, my next cost-free project is to get the matching T21 tuner to stop drifting out of tune and I'll be happy...
I can vouch for Neutrik DIN plugs too :thmbsp: . Unlike those horrid cheap ones, you
can actually solder decent thickness interconnect cable to the backs of the pins without the damned plastic bit melting first and leaving the pins pointing off in all directions. :tresbon:
