I was expecting there to be a small sign inside, that said "An audiofool was here." lol I spent quite a few years reading "audiophile" forum threads, dabbling in Digital Room Correction, building and repairing amps, and thought I'd seen it all - until this vid. :p

thats audiophile dust, sold at 100 a gram!

You are a remarkably patient and kindhearted person. If I opened that amp up and saw that cluster f@ck, I'd close it right back up and send it back to the owner. Sand in the pots.....O-M-G!!!

OMFG! Sand & silicone????? What's wrong with previous owner?

The sand prevents oxidation into the switches sanding the contacts

OMG @ sand added into those candle containers lol! Insane the things people do!!! Great job =D

"That's... an interesting thing to do" - what an understatement :D I love it!

Nice overview. I have my Intek since 1990/91. Though it is not High-End and doesn't have the grunt to satisfyingly drive more demanding speakers, it sounds better than many amplifiers of its tier. I did test it side by side against my own Yamaha AX500, which was no contest at all, creek, arcam alpha and mission cyrus and put my money on this one. It may be simple and lacking on some accounts but Linn put some effort into the Phono-Section which offers MM as well as MC amplification. Look at this nicely layouted section in the upper right corner. Both will put many much more expensive (todays used prices) alternatives to shame especially the MC-section. So if you are looking for a good MC-Preamp, your budget is tight and there is an intek at hand: Give it a try as a preamp. May look like overkill using an integrated for that but may not sound like it (pun intended).

They definately fucked that up

What on earth was someone thinking with the glue and sand. Ghee whiz. Good repair there anyway.

I was thinking that you might turn the sand into mud with that contact cleaner. What an idiotic thing to do. To choose sand as a weight inside an amplifier. Why would you do that anyway? aha...transformer vibration. Makes sense. Nice job getting it tidied up again.

Sand is used in some fuses to extinguish an electric arc. Maybe it was applied to extinguish a case fire on Q602 in INTEK ;)

"Skreetch skreetc.. It's all full of sand!" Lol. That's a first one :)

The sand grains are meeting their sibblings on/in the board :)

I am literally speechless that poor Linn Intek

they also made the very very famous linn drum machine from the early 80's

Hey Jan, great video. You should consider creating a talk-free ASMR video from all the scenes of all your videos where you fix and clean your electronics with sounds of unscrewing, unmounting, , brushing, spraying (alcohol, WD40), vacuuming, etc. I'm sure it would be super chill.

The only way to fix it is to desolder the switches and pots to clean them properly. I found a Sansui AU-11000 buried in sand on a rubbish tip with a corner poking out, it was full of sand, it took a complete strip down and rebuild to get it going properly again.

Im an audiophile aka " i Want best sound quality" . But these cups with sand? I never heard about IT and saw something like this. IT looks like somekind a set up to trigger all these audio haters. And as i see comments they are triggered 😁

I have this model amp, I got it out of storage after many years travelling, I took off the cover, gave it a good clean with vacuum and cotton buds and it is honestly like new.... the sound is awsome like the day when I bought it from new. To see what this guy did to his unit is a total disgrace.

I do audio mods, ones that actually work. Unfortunately idiots on forums talk about things like the effects of vibration on amps so others go and do dumb stuff like this. I guarantee that a double blind test would show no difference between before and after. I also guarantee that the person who did that 'heard' a huge difference. There are mods that work like upgrading power supply and coupling caps. These things make a big difference. Most of the smoke oil stuff makes zero difference.

In Europe Linn is a more than well known name amongst us "purists" who doesn't like the warm sound of American HiFi like Krell etc. I used to be a Krell/Mark Levinson guy before I discovered Linn and I've stayed true since the mid 90's! Really horrible anti--vibration measures by someone... There are much simpler ways to eliminate vibrations!

Linn products are based in Waterfoot a small village outside Glasgow, about 7km from me

Strangly enough i have seen that mod with the silocon and sand in two of these amps the idea (so i am told) came from an artical in a well known british magazine.

My first job from school was working in a shop repairing and selling this very type of Amp, to see what somebody has done here just makes very angry and sad

Gorgeous amp, but holy cow, 'sand-in-tealights anti-vibration modules' are not a quality DIY spark of genious. I chuckled out loud when you found those. Fun vid!

When I was in Audio business , I learned that there are many kinds of people in it, but must say ,majority of audiophiles are psychiatric cases.

Teslanol Oszillin T6 is definitely the best.

If it was yours to keep, a complete rebuild would be par for the course. There's a few ways you can remove the selastic, usually white spirits or turpentine replacement paint thinner weaken it sufficiently, but there's also siloxane delinking agents (caulking stripper) you can buy at a home improvement store.

Sand! I didn't see that one coming.

Excellent as usual. Thanks for the upload.

Great vid again Jan love the amp very informative. Kim

LOL, I thought the glue was horrible when you opened the case. That was until I saw the sand filled tea lights. WTF! I can´t see anyone doing that without drugs - seriously. You probably could clean the switches using a vacuum cleaner with a small nozzle. I did this on the switches and potis of my Harman Kardon 6250. It worked very well and I got rid of about 95% of the scratching. But I´ve read it can be problematic because the air flow can induce electric voltage. But that goes for all kind of airflow, including blowing. And the problem with blowing is of course you could get dust everywere - or in your case SAND. I can´t get over that mod. BTW Thanks for the recommendation of Teslanol Oszillin T6. I´m gonna get some of that at some point.

Always play NCS - music No copyright ..

Wow, never seen anything like it! Well done. Wonder how much sand is under the PCB ;-)

I've seen stuff like this with the glue on guitar power heads but never seen weights. Some RG-6 or RG-59 Coax with BNC ends and a BNC to Banana adapter works well. At my job we use RG-6 for Subwoofers, works quite well.

You're not going to clean all that silicone that they put around the inside perimeter of the Amplifier? or are you just going to leave it?

So I am assuming that the sand in the switches is what was causing all the problems. A very strange modification to keep vibration down. They Have isolation feet for that, lol. Yes Linn is very high end, a very nice integrated amplifier.

another interesting video. about the cleaner spray: i have no experience with the spray you are using - how good is it for long term preservation? many contact cleaners are very agressive and do more harm than good in the long run. the agressive ones do a good job at removing corrosion at first but leave residue behind that actually corrodes contacts even further over time to the point contacts in switches and pots get completely destroyed. at work we use "reiniger 601" almost exclusively. it evaporates without any leftovers almost like isopropyl alcohol

Is there a difference between T6 and Kontakt Chemie Tuner 600? I think Muricans use DeoxIT D5, but i've never seen it in Europe. Also you can use the KZfaq music library... not that i care about hearing an amp over KZfaq, it's bonkers anyway, better to trust your judgement that it sounds fine.

In worst case scenario, you might have to disassemble the switches and get rid of sand particles. I'd prefer big hex nuts wrapped with plastic over sand-filled tealight cups!

Wonderful. Miles Davis has never sounded so good :D

I have the same model ( without the sand etc ) located in CT any suggestions on a repair source ?

The Intek wasn't a particularly high-end amp to begin with. If this was a higher end one it would had been made of aluminium extrusion and the PCB would had been floating on rubber mounts. These Darlington transistor hi-fi amps were very popular at that time. I have one myself but it's a Phoenix Gold M25 and it needs a very beefy power supply to run properly so I haven't tried it yet.

Hi Jan, nice Video! I had the same problem had with my Intek amplifier ( but mine is a non-mod, original inside one ;-) ). I lived with it but now I have "perfect" silence. No listening channel delivers any sound. I know thats another problem, but I would like to ask what you think about it or anyone here in the comments? In my opinion that smells like a broken poti. I'll try to measure the transistor behind the volume poti to have a lok. If that has good values I would like to replace the poti.

Is it an SX-64 under the table? A video about it would be really nice.

I wonder if the previous imbicile owner used acetic acid based silicone. The acetic acid will cause bad corrosion inside.

Great video! It's easy to recognize M Davis from oscilloscope - just trying to make some jokes. :)

i guess bar was to strengthen top for other hifi to stand ontop, but the rest, i have some green sharpies to sell him to paint the edges of his CD collection, for a cheap $50 each , haha

And what was the purpose dir this whole glue areas in the case? Never das those Things before.

Btw you've used way too much contact cleaner there. I'd rather flusch the pot with a bunch of isopropanol, like really much of it. Then you turn the pot fully to the left spray a little bit of contact cleaner into the pot, move it around ,then fully to the right and spray again a little bit. But in the end you've fixed it and that's what matters :D BTW I'm already getting mad when I'm being a given something to repair and screws are missing but now I've seen it all :D

what about recapping the capacitors ?

The sand is an old trick - it weighs up the "audiophile" grade piece of equipment to make the old addage "if its damn heavy it must be good" appear true. It serves no other purpose. Never seen it in an amp though - Have seen it in an "expensive" SMPS and a CB radio before!!! :P At least in the SMPS the sand was in a "cap" sized can and even soldered to the board (with no traces going to it)!

Sand? I am speechless.

@ Jan Beta Do you know what class amp this is considered??

I wouldn't part with my intek- powertek combo.

can the knobs of these source switches be pulled off so you can spray the contact cleaner inside the front of the switches ?

hi friend do you speak dutch, i have a schematic needs translation to English if you can thanks in advance

LOL😅 Interesting mod

.....jan, mate. my brother from another country. i have an old marantz pm250 to fix the potentiometer :) a bit of compressed air would have been good to blow out that sand from those selectors (just a suggestion)

I would love that amp.

If you find out who it was... play "Enter sandman" every time you see him.

Just unbelievable... First for everything I suppose.

That poor amplifier :(

sand! never, lead does just fine bolted in..

DRUGS, that's all i can say.

It's dusty maybe because its filled full of glue and sand? If you google "Machina Dynamica's Brilliant Pebbles" you'll see where this nonsense comes from (well at least one place). In the US I've never heard of this brand - nice find though :).

Well that's a first.... sand weights.

or is it silica gel?

Sometimes audio files are mentally ill they have a tendency to go overboard with their equipment I have prepared some of their equipment some of them and treat their equipment better than they treat their families you would not believe I have some stories to tell you I had a person who had I would say close to a million dollars invested in audio equipment in one room in Upstate New York and I don't think he knew how to operate 10% of it properly and half the time I would be cold over there to show him how to operate a piece of equipment that he had not braided in 10 years and his wife needed a new car and he would go out and spend $10,000 on a set of cables 4 speakers yes right you heard what I said $10,000 on a set of cables for a set of speakers and his wife was driving around that a jalopy just so he thought he could hear the difference in the sound of the speakers when I told him that for about $500 he could make his own cables same quality same specs I need to save $9,500 but he'd rather go out and spend the 10,000 then go out and do it yourself makes no sense that's like I have a Yamaha receiver here that I've done so many modifications to that I would put it up against any Marantz you could not even close your eyes I put into the same pair of speakers that I have but the two receivers side by side play both peace the music out of the same two of the same turntable you would not be able to tell the difference between those two receivers 1 Receiver right now on eBay is going for a believe $4,800 and my receiver with all the modifications that I did to it cost me $600 and that includes two parts souten it's impressive that these audiophiles will spend all kinds of money for Stuff that really is nothing but a psychological thing and not really something that you can tell the difference you can put all the gauges in the world all the sound testing equipment you want in the world and you cannot tell the difference between a system the cost $2,000 and a system that cost $15,000 because the human ear can only hear a certain amount and anybody who tells you any different needs their head examined that's like when somebody tries to tell you that you going to when you look at a 4K TV and you look at 8K TV you can tell the difference the human eye cannot see an 8K it's all a gimmick so when they try to sell you your 8K television you can barely tell the difference between regular good television and a 4K TV is barely a difference you can see the difference you cannot tell the difference between a 4K 8K television because the human eye cannot see it it's not made for it just like the human ear can only hear a certain amount of Lowe's and a certain amount of highs I are one of these people who have had an injury to my right ear where I am fortunate enough I can understand I can determine a certain amount more high frequencies then some people it was all due to an accident when I was a child I can hear a few octaves higher that a normal human and it was tested. And the doctor's office that's the only difference I have and that's only my right ear nobody no matter who you say you are can literally tell a whole lot of difference between a really big expensive sound system at a medium priced sound system you just a fool yourself when you go out you can get your money you go out to spend with the way you want do you want to spend a million dollars on a sound system the right ahead but I find it foolish and wasteful I would much rather do it myself I build my own speakers I modify my own amplifiers and receivers and I enjoy it I even build my own crossovers and it's a lot of fun because what I'm done I know that I made it sound good

whoever put those stupid sand filled candles in there was clearly on drugs.

Use WD40 should always use WD40 after using contact cleaner recommended by the radio Institute

Sandboxaudio. :-)

Ugh. Yes I have seen audiophool idiots doing this with silicone caulking to dampen "resonance". Absolute snake oil. No wonder they put tamper proof screws on things these days :/

OMG O.o i seen strange things but yeah that's so dumb.....

:)