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The Official Harman Kardon H/K Citation Owners Thread

How could they not publish power specs? Wasn't this about the time that the FTC started controlling power specs? Or was there a loophole where the specs only needed to be properly specified, but nothing stating that the specs couldn't be missing?
 
I’m lucky I happened onto it. Really great seller got it from the original owner with the original receipts from the base PX(!) manuals, warranty cards and service manuals too! Great start to the weekend.
 
Gorgeous kit! Would love to hear the Allison's with that set up. I can almost feel the power from here! Congrats. The inside looks impeccable...original power caps?
 
MotherSauce1 said:
Gorgeous kit! Would love to hear the Allison's with that set up. I can almost feel the power from here! Congrats. The inside looks impeccable...original power caps?
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Pretty much everything’s original, save for an op amp replacement on the EQ board, a couple of LEDs and a new power cord on the amp. I cannot believe how meticulously kept up these were by the owner (who obviously cared for them the way I do mine.)

The Allisons sound FANTASTIC with this. I was using a Nak SR-3A with them to bridge me to a better amp, and there’s no contest (allowing that it’s not a fair contest anyway.) I’m liking the phono stage of the 17 in particular.
 
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Hi All!
Recently acquired a nice HK Citation 7.1
Can’t find any info on idle current .
Would like to check it , worse case scenario I’ll probably take average of all four amp cards and adjust accordingly.
Jim
 
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Finished up the rebuild/upgrade on my original HK Citation 11. It really is a great piece of equipment to work on. My intensions were at first to upgrade all components I could, but as I got more and more familiar with it's components I decided to leave much of it in place. First up was C6 for the power supply which can be seen as the big blue cap. it is disconnected and a like valued Nichicon PW(M) is under the chassis keeping the appearance.
Bottom right is the Phono preamp board. Only two electrolytic capacitors were available to replace. I used Nichicon UFG Caps. The two red film caps were replaced as one of the originals was broken. As well as both resistors of this critical filter circuit. I tested each resistor and replaced these two. One was out of specs and I replaced the mated channel as well.

The power distribution board is above that. All the electrolytic were replaced with Nichicon PW(M). The two axial caps were also replaced, as well as the three Diodes used for regulation. Each resistor was tested for tolerance.
Upper left is the preamp output board. The problem child. Originally I used another AK'ers suggested replacements for the caps which were all radial caps which were never going to work so I had to do a lot of research to find suitable axial caps which would fit at all. As can be seen, the two on top, are extended past the mounting hole. Actually all the axial caps available were tough fits but the electrical values are correct. There were other resistors I intended to replace but i found the original were of such high quality there are no replacements for them. So I left them in place. All resistors were tested for tolerance. A couple were replaced. There was a problem with some switching noises when the tone boards were engaged but it turned out to be a power/up charging timing scenario which was solved with patience and board swapping.
I was lucky to have two units to switch and test. I still ended up replacing some jfets on suspicion. Cant hurt.
Both tone boards had new electrolytic replaced as well.
This was a worthy project as the results are evident. There are no strange sounds coming from this unit and it sounds great and very clean at volume levels beyond pleasurable levels. I used it to replace the second Citation 11 I acquired. It needs much work. But trial and errors are over. Yes I ordered parts for it as well.

I found between the two HK 11's there are differences in components as well as the boards themselves. Maybe 3 years difference in build times. The second one has a pre amp level adjustment which will be interesting to address. I buttoned this up fast to protect it as it is used daily. Will have more pictures for the next one.
 
With some great assistance from Ray G. of AK, I have seen the first life out of this Citation 16! It really looked like a basket case when I got it, someone replaced two of the big filter caps with some that had mismatched specs, and were smaller in size resulting in someone using electrical tape to mount them. :yikes:

After I found correct rated filter caps, I had to order mounting clamps for them because the diameter was smaller. Ray got them installed for me and it is in final testing stages, checking for any other issues. By initial testing it's a solid 150 WPC amplifier, and who doesn't like colored LED power meters? I can't wait to hook it in a system and see how I like it.

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In the "Separated By Birth" department, I like how Cambridge has borrowed some of the styling of the Citation Receiver here. Very nice looking piece of kit.

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Hello all, My very first fancy stereo that I set up in the mid 70's was a Citation Eleven driven by two SWTPC Tiger .01 mono amps. It's all out in the garage and I'm thinking of pulling it out to play with. Whatever I thought I knew about setting up stereo's is long gone. I acquired a 100 wpc Onkyo amp that I thought I'd connect to the H/K. What I'm wondering at this point is should I connect speakers to the amp or the preamp? Also is that weird plug just for a priority connection to a Citation 12 amp? So I would just use one of the preamp outs? Also I saw this spec on a website somewhere "Output: 2V (Pre out), 8V (Pre out Max)" Does that mean that the two preamp outs are different? Sorry for the entry level questions, I'm trying to catch up. Thanks!
 
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Preamp out from the 11 to the amp. Speakers connected to the amp. You're better off asking questions like this in the General audio discussion forum because there's more traffic there.
Welcome to AK!:beerchug:
BTW the weird connector is proprietary to the 11 to 12 connection.
 
Skotyman said:
Hello all, My very first fancy stereo that I set up in the mid 70's was a Citation Eleven driven by two SWTPC Tiger .01 mono amps. It's all out in the garage and I'm thinking of pulling it out to play with. Whatever I thought I knew about setting up stereo's is long gone. I acquired a 100 wpc Onkyo amp that I thought I'd connect to the H/K. What I'm wondering at this point is should I connect speakers to the amp or the preamp? Also is that weird plug just for a priority connection to a Citation 12 amp? So I would just use one of the preamp outs? Also I saw this spec on a website somewhere "Output: 2V (Pre out), 8V (Pre out Max)" Does that mean that the two preamp outs are different? Sorry for the entry level questions, I'm trying to catch up. Thanks!
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Welcome back! Your first stop should be to visit hifiengine, where you can find the manual for the Citation 11. That will help guide your connection quest.

Short answer is that you should connect to the Onkyo using one of the Pre Out terminals of the Citation. If you had the proprietary cable for the 11, you could connect that to the Onkyo so you could use the selector switch on the 11 to switch between two pairs of speakers OR headphones (the benefit of the latter being you get the full benefit of the amplifier output to the headphone jack, for those hard to drive cans.)
 
Roadrash said:
Preamp out from the 11 to the amp. Speakers connected to the amp. You're better off asking questions like this in the General audio discussion forum because there's more traffic there.
Welcome to AK!:beerchug:
BTW the weird connector is proprietary to the 11 to 12 connection.
Click to expand...
Thank you.
 
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