Denon 3803 repair....something has changed.

gavinator68

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Hello All,

I am new to the site and looking for help understanding what happened to my amplifier.

My amp is a Denon 3803 and I have been the only owner since new. It has been set-up in my listening room for years without a glitch. After not having used the system for quite a while my GF wanted to move our system to a different room. So after setting it all up and powering on, it sounded uninspired..............then I tried to turn it up.

I am experiencing something that I cannot even label, so I will try to describe the issue in hopes of narrowing it down. When listening at normal volumes it sounds as if it is missing the mids, all I hear are lows and highs. It sounds decent without noticeable distortion. When I turn it up beyond -5 the sub starts to lose control and is constantly moving in and out at full excursion. It actually starts making things shimmy in the room. The only way I can make it stop its to lower the volume to almost nothing until the sub regains control. I NEVER had this happen in the past and it is utterly unusable.

I verified that it is the amp as I swapped it out with a KNOWN GOOD amp from my neighbor. His amp does not make things sound as my Denon, no matter how high I push it.........things sound great!! Mids are present and the sound is exceptional with very well controlled bass.

I performed the factory reset and things are the same as before. I have triple checked ALL connections. We swapped out the amp and all connections 3 times. Every time the spare amp worked flawlessly and the Denon exhibited the same poor behavior.

I am an electronics maker as a hobby and have solid soldering skills and all the tools to work on SMD parts. I have performed a cursory inspection of all caps, fuses, and generally looking for anything electronically suspicious. All "looks" normal. All fuses are intact and capable of conducting current. I have the actual factory "service" manual with schematics and parts lists.

I am so disappointed with this as I simply fell in love with the warm and accurate delivery of my Denon. I hesitate to simply throw it in the trash and buy new as I know how darned expensive it will be to match or exceed the specs and sound of this OLD Denon. And apparently the old is worth so little that it makes this even more difficult. I would love to fix this one and see how long it lasts.

Any help or thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

David
 

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