COMPLETE RESTORATION SERVICE---PHASE LINEAR 4000

MUST READ--MUST READ--READ THIS FIRST!....This is not a listing for a Phase Linear 4000 preamp for an absurdly low price. No, this is a listing for the service work required to make a Phase Linear 4000 perform a lot like it did when it was new....also at a pretty reasonable price. So if you have a Phase 4000 that is in need of restoration work, read on. If you are in the process of buying a Phase 4000, it will need to have this work done, so read on. If you have or are getting a 4000 series II this listing also applies. Sure, I know it is quite a bit different (I know a helluva lot better than you do in fact). The Series II winds up being the same amount of work as the original 4000, so I repeat, this listing will do for either one.

Some things in the world are predictable.....it will rain on the weekend, politicians will lie, Phase Linear 4000's will need a complete restoration which is almost always the same. Until they have the complete restoration, they will not work worth a damn, and nothing less will do. So you have this Phase 4000 and you long to use it. Your heart tells you that something that cool looking has to sound GREAT but all you get is wheezes and pops and half the time nothing at all. What is up with that? What can a poor would-be music listener do?????

Lucky you. This is not a problem without solution. What you must do is send your 4000 to Circle Stereo and have us do the Phase 4000 complete restoration. After this has been done, this lovely piece of equipment will last for years and years. You will be so inspired by musical pleasure that your career will be renewed. You will become wealthy and a friend to all. You will be able to speak to animals......pretty good huh!

Get serious? It is difficult, but ok. The truth is that the Phase 4000, when working well is a really cool preamp. It is nice to look at, it has good flexibility within your system, and it is very musical. Since I repair these guys, I listen to them all the time....they sound good. Sure, you can buy all sorts of fancy preamps that will impress your friends, and you can pay huge dollars......but the 4000 sounds good. I think that may be what this is all about. The simple truth is that I can take a 4000 that works poorly to not at all and I can perform this complete restoration and then the preamp works really well and creates much pleasure. They are pretty consistent when you address their usual problems.

Here is the quick description. First, it is necessary to clean and deoxidize all of the switches and controls....to get rid of the pops and noises and such as that. We use a solvent followed by a deoxidizer and it works pretty well. Next is the tricky part.....not because of technical complexity, but because of the need to be careful and thorough. In the thirty years since these were made, they have developed a great multitude of bad solder joints. These are particularly serious where the small boards plug into the mother board, but they show up in many other places as well. The key to a successful repair is to get all of them and to do high quality solder work. I am in the habit of marking them after completion so I will not lose track of any of them. This is visible in the next picture.

After all of the cleaning and resoldering, you are close to where you need to be, but I like to add one more item. These are sometimes a bit hummy, and we don't like hummy at all, so I routinely replace the filter capacitors in the power supply. This helps a lot, the hums go away, and I think they sound better overall with new caps. When that is complete, all that remains is to do the cosmetic work to make them as pretty and shiny as possible. And there you have it. It is just like a new preamp.

These preamps very rarely have electronic failures. Replacing chips and things is not a frequent consideration. Likewise, the controls, transformers, etc have a very low failure rate. For this reason, finding other problems doesn't happen much. Even so, we like to check the piece very carefully before proceeding with the restoration. If we find a problem, we will consult with you before we do the job. I focused in this listing on the Phase Linear 4000 series one. They did make a series II as well. It looks and functions a bit differently, but its overhaul is equally predictable. If you have a series II, we can do that with every bit as much pleasure as the series one. So send us your poor, your tired, your scruffy preamps yearning to play well, and we'll fix 'em for you. Thanks, Bill