SkipEsquire

Prompted by someone's post in one of the various now playing threads I checked out the latest Pelican album that came out last weekish. Not exactly what I expected but it's been like 10years since I last heard a Pelican album. I enjoyed it nonetheless. https://pelicansl.bandcamp.com/album/nighttime-stories

An interesting full circle to my journey today.. Took the bike to Dan Murphy's to grab some ciders afterJunkyard finished. Cooked some lunch with a cider and listened to Rare Earth - Ma Then moved on to Funkadelic - Maggot Brain whilst reading a little about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Whitfield Then my neighbour came home who's lived in Dubbo since the 70s, went over there for a drink and smoke and to ask about The Reels, he grew up in the house across from where they recorded the first album. He has all their LPs too, so there I was right back where I started this morning, only a few ciders deep, in better company and listening to Quasimodos Dream for the first time with my neighbour, digging through his other records for good stuff to borrow. Borrowed the other Reels albums, The Clash, B-52s.. It was a good Saturday afternoon.

Started with The Reels as I've seen a copy of their debut LP for sale but never actually heard them before; Now moved onto The Birthday Party - Junkyard .. I've had bronchitis, been dying all week but I'm starting to feel better so could be an exceptional saturday afternoon at this rate lol

Finally clicked the buy button on the Jeff Buckley - Live at Sin-e RSD2018 release. It's a 4xLP box so I really hope it turns out to be good quality as I've owned the album digitally for such a long time, going to be quite a different experience having to handle records 8 times to get to the end. Pretty excited to get my hands on it.

I think it was 'Rock Factory'? big CD store in Wollongong mall back in the early mid-2000s where they used to do a deal like that. Memory is fuzzy on the specifics but I think you made a customer account and every X number of purchases you got a decent chunk of store credit. Of course downloading was becoming more and more of a thing and it closed down after a few years. I really enjoyed that shop while it lasted though.

Top album 👌Mrs Esquire heard it for the first time this week too and enjoyed it.

Had a browse in store on the way to Woolies and picked up some certified bangers for $24 👌

I will take Zeppelin I and II and The Mothers, PM incoming, cheers.

Thanks for the tip, did some reading up on the differences between DC resistance and impedence, I think I understand the basics of it at least. The youtube videos and reading I did previously to try and learn how I can test the speaker boxes were obviously pretty basic stuff and didn't go into great detail about any of that. As for the crossover making the circuit read open, I had pretty much guessed it was something like that rather than a fault in the speakers since they've always worked fine. Again, the rudimentary tutorials I had checked out were only really testing the individual drivers directly from their terminals, not testing at the inputs of an assembled speaker box, so none of them mentioned anything about crossovers or how multimeter would interact with that.

TLDR: Replacement amp is good, works fine with the technics speakers, Queensland speaker repair were excellent to deal with, highly recommended. FINAL UPDATE (?) : The replacement amp arrived last week after the little delay from easter public holidays. I reluctantly had to let it just sit there in the box while I decided what I was doing about speakers. After endless searching and stress I couldn't find anything I really wanted to spend money on (speakers were never in the budget) so I instead decided to just get any speakers I could find locally cheap as possible, so I could just wire it all up and confirm the amp is in good working order. After another couple days of looking everywhere (online, pawn shop, op shop, garage sale, asking random people) I still had found no viable options and turned my thoughts back to speakers I currently own. I went to Jaycar and bought a digital multimeter for $20, stuffed the 'rods?' into the inputs on the back of the speaker boxes to test both impedence and continuity. Bottom holes = 12ohm impedence, and positive for continuity.. exactly as expected really. Top holes = could not get any impedence reading, negative result for continuity.. strange Measuring from the speaker cable with a jumper between inputs = still 12ohm impedence? positive for continuity and the speakers audibly crackled a little when touching the multimeter rods onto the speaker wire. Decided to bite the bullet and wired the speakers to the amp using only the bottom inputs giving me 12ohm load on the amp (and therefore guaranteed safe?). The sound lacked treble (as expected) but I listened to sound from the pc for 30mins or so but I did notice that the same 3-5 sec red LED was present between the orange 'standby' and the blue 'powered' indication.. So then I unplugged all the power and inputs, put the jumpers back in the speakers between the bottom and top inputs, re-powered everything, same red LED between orange and blue... then all the treble returned and everything sounded good. Again I listened for around 30mins with no issues. Everything looking good so far, unplugged all the power and hooked up the turntable for the final and most important test.. Plugged everything back in, dropped The Waterboys on the platter, same red LED between orange and blue on the amp.. Success, everything worked fine.. confirming the previous amp at least had a faulty phono stage and I didn't damage anything as I had been fearing this entire time. The red LED is still a mystery honestly, the singular mention of red LED in the user manual clearly states it means the amp is overheating, or impedence is too low, neither of which can be possible in any of these cases if it had just been unboxed and had a 12ohm load connected.. My working theory is it's just a temporary 'protection mode' or whatever whilst it changes from standby to powered? I'm gonna contact NAD to try and get a definitive answer.. And the speakers are also still a mystery, yesterday was the first day I've ever used a multimeter, the fact that the top inputs give no reading for impedence OR continuity seems very strange to me.. (some strange internal wiring scheme? some component 'breaking' the circuit?) I'll continue using these speakers until I know what I actually want, which was the original plan, and when they get retired I'll prob break them open just to find out WTF going on inside there. Honestly they are fine sounding speakers to my ears and have paid for themselves hundreds of times over considering what I paid, compared to the prices of most 'desirable' hifi speakers, even on the lowest end of the spectrum. Also definitely want to include props for Queensland Speaker Repairs, whom I bought the amp from on eBay. Immediately replaced it with a new unit at zero cost to me. Really good communication throughout. I searched this forum for opinions on them before I committed to the purchase and there were a couple positive 'reviews' so I'd like to add mine to the record if it's of use to anyone in the future. Thanks for everyone's advice here, the last couple posts between A9X and Richard and the 'basically zero technical knowledge' comment (I understand it wasn't intended as an insult to me, however) was a big motivator to make this work TBH. I do have some technical knowledge, I just can't see inside permanently sealed wooden and plastic boxes and thought someone else may already HAVE the knowledge of what's in the box to share with me, or at least some strategies to find out. At the most I would have done as described above and destructively but repairably opened the boxes to reveal the mystery within, and probably gained some more technical knowledge in the process, and then could have closed them back up and use them in the future knowing exactly how they're wired... Throwing a perfectly functional pair of speakers in the bin seems rather wasteful (Bonus anecdote; I BOUGHT these speakers from the tip for $5, don't remember if it was each or together, over 5 years ago) Bonus bonus anecdote; I returned the multimeter and got my $20 back aswell.

2 updates; The seller of the amp says they have ordered new stock from the distributor to replace this one and should be on it's way monday or tuesday. Pretty happy with that, although I didn't expect too much hassle as they are a reputable business, not just some eBay random. Also I found the same model of speakers I'm attempting to use sold on eBay last week for QUITE a lot more than I paid for my pair, so maybe I'll stick them up on eBay or gumtree and try improve my speaker hunting budget since I don't want to risk using them again. https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/TECHNICS-SB-EH600-SPEAKER-SYSTEM-FLOOR-SPEAKERS-3-WAY-SYSTEM-160W-/264248615196?_trksid=p2047675.m43663.l10137&nordt=true&rt=nc&orig_cvip=true Maybe it was just some random fluke that those speakers sold at all, let alone for that price, but they're just collecting dust in my posession now so it's worth a try I suppose.

Couldn't find any info on what the temporary red LED after turning the unit on means, only that the permanent solid red on NADs usually means the unit is in protection mode and needs to visit a technician. So I've just disconnected everything while I wait for the seller's reply to my query. It has 1 year warranty supposedly so I assume I'll be advised to take that route and just have to ride it out, hopefully the can diagnose/repair both the phono and red LED issues and tell me I wasn't responsible lol. Once again want to say thanks. I appreciate everyone's assistance here.

So after the red light showed that first time. Nothing I can do will remove it, everytime I go from standby to on, it shows a red error light for 3-5 seconds and then after that the sound starts coming out the speakers. I unplugged it for 15minutes, let it cool right down, tried series, parallel and only wiring one of the speaker inputs to the unit, even tried plugging headphones in.. nothing worked it just throws the error light every time I go from standby to on.. When I did the very first power up there was no red LED so definitely something is wrong now and I don't want to leave it on for any amount of time to see if it powers itself down again. I have contacted the seller about both the phono stage not making sound and the red LEDs of doom. Not sure what else I can do now really. Super bummed out.

Thanks for the replies, needed that reassurance before potentially breaking something. I have it all hooked up and the good news is the amp is not giving me any Red LED for "Overall impedence too low" which is great.. Bad news is no sound coming through the phono channel and I'm not sure if my cartridge is somehow incompatible or the amp/phono stage is faulty. Have no other turntable or cartridge to troubleshoot so I'm a bit disappointed now. I may need to make another thread to figure out cartridge/phono compatability as know nothing about it and can't find any technical information about this specific cartridge online (Realistic R700e) it worked fine with the Yamaha since I bought it. EDIT: I spoke too soon, the amp just switched to standby with red LED which in the troubleshooting section of the manual means it either overheated or "overall impedence of loudspeakers too low"

Thanks for the reply SlugSR20, really keen to spin some records but definitely didn't want to damage my new amp. The Circuit diagram is from the service manual of the original stereo system these speakers came with that i found here: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjOjMf98cbhAhUMNrwKHajNCxQQFjADegQIABAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vintageshifi.com%2Frepertoire-pdf%2Fpdf%2Ftelecharge.php%3Fpdf%3DTechnics-SAEH-500-Service-Manual.pdf&usg=AOvVaw34LsKN7Vs3bPGlzE9kfOga I'm not an expert by any stretch but to me it looks like each channel was running the high + low in parallel on the internals of that amplifier and I'd just be replicating that externally by connecting the speaker box inputs to the same terminals. (which also makes me wonder if the speaker loading being wrong for years is what killed my old yamaha receiver lol)