Another Vintage Stereo Post

This whole vintage stereo thing is getting a little out of hand. I actually spent money!
My wife seems a bit bemused by the whole thing. I have not made a big deal about the latest addition as I am a little sensitive about the amount of Crap I drag home. However, I almost never spend more than $25 on anything.
I found a Dynaco ST-120 amp on craigslist. The fellow I bought it from was really interesting. I talked to him for something like two hours and I couldn't really back out of the deal at that point. He was asking $75. The ad has been on for several weeks at $100 and I doubt he got many calls.
The Dynaco ST-120 was Dynaco's first attempt at a solid state amplifier. There were some problems. Plus it was a kit and often there were problems with the amateur soldering jobs.
I got it home an connected it to my amplifier. I hooked it into the headphone socket since my KA3500 does not have a preamp output. I turned the volume control down and switched on the Dynaco. There was a loud pop though the speakers and buzzing noise.
I tried a record and one speaker rattled badly. I switched the amp off and waited a minute for the caps to drain and then turned it back on. I got pretty good sound which then faded in volume and became quite fuzzy. There is no fuse on the output of the amp and I think this is how the powersupply deals with a short circuit. I don't really understand it but I think it increases the voltage but decrease the amperage to keep it from burning anything up.
I disconnected the Dynaco 120 and hooked the speakers back up the KA3500 now I had distortion in my right speaker. I kind of freaked out a bit. I scored a pair of Dynaco A-25's which are kind of ugly but sound incredible. I'm not going to be able to touch another pair for less than $200 which is hard to do on a $35 budget.
Muddy Valley suggested that since it was an intermittent problem I turn the offending speaker face down and run it to see if something had stuck in the voice coil. Wonder of wonders it worked.
I pulled the cage off of the Dynaco 120 and discovered the solder had melted where the power supply capacitor lead was soldered to the circuit board.
Sunday afternoon I resoldered it and low and behold it worked.

I hooked it back up the head phone jack on the Kenwood but I hooked up my Baby Advents as I do not want to kill the Dynaco's and the Advents already have fried crossovers. It worked! Very little noise.
The Dynaco 120 is not considered a very good amp by the audiophiles but I'm not exactly "HiFi" and it fits in with the rest of my Dnyaco set up and plus, it looks cool so who cares!
I am listening to the amp at this very moment. It sounds incredibly clean hooked to my little Sansa MP3 player and playing though some little Jensen bookshelf speakers I stole from my brother. They don't have a lot of bass so I can't really work the amp very hard but it is not getting hot at volumes that don't wake the rest of the family.
I am listening to Merle and Lefty and a little Ian Tyson but have not worked up my nerve to give the Legendary Stardust cowboy a try.
It sounds pretty incredible with strong midrange guitar and vocals. I am listening to the Louvin Brothers, "The Drunkard's Prayer" right now. Excellent details in the high range. I can't hear any noise at moderate volumes. The bass is not real strong but these are little bookshelf speakers, but the tone is pretty good.