Advice powering up old Crown amp

[randalp3000]

Been getting into spinning vinyl in my shop and want to upgrade our hifi.

I've got an old Crown DC300A that has spent about 15 years sitting in a wet basement or garage in a road rack.

Should I just fire this thing up and see if it still works or should I bring it up slow on a variac and try to reform the caps?

Thanks much
rp

[Leo_Gnardo]

Variac for sure. Start with nothing attached to the outputs. If you get up to full line voltage, and no DC offset more than quarter of a volt, then try resistors, put in a sine wave, see what it does on a scope. Likely will need volume pots cleaned. If it passes the sine wave into R's test then OK for speakers. Good idea to fuse the speaker line anyway regardless of arguments about how it wrecks the damping factor. If your speaker turns to smoke you'll not be thinking about damping factor.

Just revived a Phase Linear 400 last week. Needed a pair of small caps to replace ones visibly leaking spuzz on the circuit board. Before powering up, look closely and make sure the same isn't happening to your prize.

[Stevem]

These amps have a fist full of small caps in the circuit that will not reform like the main power supply rail filters will!
If it does work it likely will not work for long, so just be ready with a back up amp if you take it out on a live gig!

[randalp3000]

thanks much for the advice. Now to find time to put it on the bench.