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new2me Counterpoint SA-12 and SA-2000 what do i need to know

michigannick

michigannick

Well-Known Member
The back story here is someone came to me with a deal and included in the deal would be these 2 items. they look great .. and all of the gear seemed to be of a higher quality. Once i found they were tube hybrid's my interest was peaked ..

What do i need to know about these?

Does Michael Elliott still have upgrades .. is there any documentation of the upgrade processes?

I took the liberty of posting a half breed in the full blood .. but hey where would i post this?

I know little to nothing of these other than a days worth of looking implies I should be happy. I am on the road so i was unable to hook them up and test them at home yet.
 
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You did good! Really, really good! :jump:


Michael Elliott designed awesome gear. Very good sounding too. Considered state-of-the-art High End gear, at the time. And those 2 pieces should work together well. No phono section, in that preamp, but still worthy, for standard sources. A nice 100 watt hybrid amp too.

Now unfortunately, Michael Elliott is retired. So, no more upgrades available, through him, at all. Though, I believe that there are 1 or 2 shops that Michael Elliot 'authorized' to repair and possibly upgrade his designs too. I'll have to look and see if I can find the links to them.

Now, the only negative, that I know of: Be careful with that amp! It uses a very proprietary circuit design, and output mosfet transistors. While robust, and capable of good output current, that mosfet is no longer available new. At all! They're even very rare used. So, don't do anything 'silly' with that amp (drive it into clipping, short a speaker wire, change cables while still on), because if it blows, it'll most likely be a pretty paperweight, for the rest of it's life. Even Michael Elliott knew this. That's one of the reason's that he offered mods, to those model amps. His later Natural Progression series of amps, and his Natural Progression mods, where a new circuit design, that replaced the unobtainium mosfets, with a easily found output transistor. They were very good designs too. Also worth looking for!

Otherwise, I'm jealous! :bowdown: Counterpoint gear was always one of my favorites, in my younger days. I'd love to have the pair that you found! :thumbsup:
 
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Hey Nick
Good luck with your new Counterpoint gear. My SA-12 is fed by a SA7.1 preamp and the combo sounds outstanding.
Stimpy has got it right; don't do anything stupid. The MOSFETS were matched closely and they are unobtainable.
Whenever doing anything I always pull the plug on both pieces. Never plug/unplug cables with the units on. Same with speaker cables.
You'll notice three prong plugs on both pieces. You may or may not need a cheater plug if you get any hum.
The amp needs a half hour to sound its best. Give it some room, it gets screaming hot!
As for mods, they were always expensive. In some cases more than what the piece cost new.
Happy listening.
Jimmy
 
Dobie i have read some pretty negative reviews of the sa-100s which were the successors to the sa-12 but some very exceptional reviews of the SA-12. .. tomorrow i will be setting them up then i planned on letting them idol for 24 hours as its been a whie since they were used. .. I am pretty excited to know what they are like. I was reading on the DIY forums that the exact replacements are not easy to find but there are better replacements .. the issue is matching them .. and in the end if they are bad the right fix is to move in the direciton of the bipolar design that Mr Elliot e=ventually settled on which are supposed to improve things substantailly (which is saying something no doubt! cause they are no slouch before)

I hope to get some listening in Tuesday night on some ADS L-1530s then maybe some KEF 104/2s or B&W 802s (series 2) before the end of week.

what other amplifiers have you had .. how doe these compare .. obviously they are still in your system so others have lost out .. i would like to hear what is "doing it" for you with these
 
Nick
Most of this Counterpoint stuff is 25+years old. A few reviews describing catastrophic failures always pop up when looking for info. I wonder how many were "user errors". My preamp was modded by the previous owner with black Rubycons and runs a tightly matched pair of 12AX7 Telefunkens in the phono stage. Except for a quad of Sovteks,the amp is unmolested. The combo is dead quiet. Playing vinyl on Spendor A6r's is very detailed with a wide sound stage.

Even if you are sure your gear was in operating condition when last used,you should use a pair of test quality speakers on start up. Don't power the amp without speakers. On power up the LED is red,sixty seconds later it is green. I always have the volume down and the standby switch on when using the turntable. Standby on also when powering off.

I have a Bryston paired with KEFs,Levinson with Harbeths,Fisher400 withKEFS and a Marantz with AR4x.
All make wonderful music and are a pleasure to listen to. Especially the Counterpoint/Linn/Spendors.
All the best.
Jimmy
 
I went through last night and cleaned up the insides they were quite dusty from having sat in the wrong place uncovered during some remodeling (it was pretty obviously dry wall dust) but these are so nicely laid out and spacious inside it was easy to get a small vacuum in there with a soft paint brush to get most of it back out if not almost all of it so that was a good starting point.

I am now more excited ;-) you have some really nice gear and if you love these .. that's saying something.

and I will hook them up to something i dont mind seeing turn to flames
 
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@edwyun that is encouraging .. i stumbled into these face first i have no idea what i picked up other than you can tell it is of higher end quality both in materials and concepts ... there seem to be a couple amps that counterpoint made that got really really panned but the man that owned these was clearly pretty particular .. he had the old Creek 4330 integrated (budget amp of the year) Nakamishi decks and 30 lb Denon cd player that had balanced outputs, optical out, coaxial digital out and rca so in 1987 (the date that is on the Denon) that would have been a very expensive piece Dahlquist DQ10s (which sound like they have been refoamed but i will have to go in and look to be sure) and matching DQ1 subs (2 of them) .. and some of the other stuff was already gone so i feel fortunate i got the call to come get them at a bargain price. and everything was meticulously labeled with instructions of how to connect them. So i am going slow .. they had been in a room with some drywall work and i am taking my time to clean them in detail inside before i go firing things up... i think that night may be tonight but i feel like i want to connect them and then let them warm up a good long time to idle maybe 24 hours since they have not been used in some time
 
The real issue/tragedy here at this juncture ... is that in peoples desire to keep their trade secrets, they are going to turn these into scrap heap irrelevance. There are retro fitting designs that yield better results than even the original had, however only a handful of people know the design and hold on to it like grim death at first this made sense you put time and effort into something and should receive the reward, but the market dictates this was not as popular as could be hoped for. . However now at this point the time for them to make money has past, no one or very few are willing to put the 1k plus they want to rebuild them. so these amps slowly will fade into irrelevance forever, conversely if someone open sourced one of the better circuit designs and shared it like Nelson Pass does with some of his First Watt stuff those people would turn into a transcendent hero ... Instead the have largely held on their great designs/updates that will now also fade into irrelevance this includes the original designer who was fixing thee for more money than they sold for originally for some time, and while I appreciate that small prototype runs justify highdollars, at this point, these amps are headed to project piles to be repurposed or into the junk heap. A sad legacy for what was a very promising direction
 
michigannick said:
The real issue/tragedy here at this juncture ... is that in peoples desire to keep their trade secrets, they are going to turn these into scrap heap irrelevance. There are retro fitting designs that yield better results than even the original had, however only a handful of people know the design and hold on to it like grim death at first this made sense you put time and effort into something and should receive the reward, but the market dictates this was not as popular as could be hoped for. . However now at this point the time for them to make money has past, no one or very few are willing to put the 1k plus they want to rebuild them. so these amps slowly will fade into irrelevance forever, conversely if someone open sourced one of the better circuit designs and shared it like Nelson Pass does with some of his First Watt stuff those people would turn into a transcendent hero ... Instead the have largely held on their great designs/updates that will now also fade into irrelevance this includes the original designer who was fixing thee for more money than they sold for originally for some time, and while I appreciate that small prototype runs justify highdollars, at this point, these amps are headed to project piles to be repurposed or into the junk heap. A sad legacy for what was a very promising direction
Click to expand...

Not makin sense ...
Ur right ..

Owned the sa-12 and the sa-100 bout 30 yrs ago .. sweet sounding gear ..
 
well for sure it did make sense people went out of their way to generate an improved product and had they charged less for their intellectual capital and more in line with the actual repair they likely would hve got their money out of scale not a few. but no longer. I did notice a cool video on the closely related but less stable SA-100 that follows one of the design mods
 
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Hi AK members

a friend of mine has a power amp Counterpoint NPS 100e.
He needs the schematic to fix a problem on 100e.
Could someone help me find this scheme?
Regards
 
I remember the amp was really hard on the driver's. Almost bought the amp, but when I went in to listen another time it sounded terrible. Drivers were toast. But when running was fantastic.
 
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