Real men audiophiles laugh at 40 kg. Are you serious or what? I mean worst case unless you are old and feeble you and a buddy grab it and move it. If you are old and feeble and can afford a McIntosh hire a couple local high school students or something to move it for you. Sorry in a curmudgeonly mood tonight.
I don't know about the US habits but in Europe the procedure is just that in this price tag.
but I appreciate the concern for great service. Can you recommend a specific multimeter?
For one that isn't expensive I like the Klein multimeters. They are built well, safe to use, and tend to be pretty reliable. They aren't equivalent to a Fluke or some others, but they'll have 10 mohm input impedance and should have .1 millivolt resolution for one costing around $35 or a bit more if you get a higher end model. You can get them at most Lowes or Home Depot stores. Usually for the same price as ordering online. The model MM325 or better should work. These aren't as accurate at lower voltages on the scale vs some better brands in my experience. As long as they are consistent it would work for your needs. Often they offer the MM325 with an electrical socket tester and a non-contact voltage checker for an additional $5. The socket tester might come in handy or not if you have grounding issues with your gear.
Complete newb here.. so do you just set it down and record the reading? And when you say measure across the terminals, can you put it in newb terms?
For a McIntosh amp you bought brand new, this sort of cosmetic defects is not acceptable even if it sounds perfect and have (edit
no noise issue. I suspect lots of people would therefore politely request an exchange regardless.Agreed. This thing is leaving soon as the new one is shipped, but do you think it's safe to run in the mean time?
Agreed. And if not an exchange, at least a full repair and factory inspection.
I did some searching and what a person gets in the Klein MM325 for USD <$45 online pricing it is very good value although it has minimum 200 V AC scale @ 0.1 ±(1.0% + 3 digits) Volt accuracy. Not enough resolution and accuracy for what it needs to do.
The idea is your speaker disconnected is picking up magnetic fields causing it to make a noise, and the field is coming from the amp. If you put a resistor of low value across the speaker input terminals with no other connections it likely would drain away the energy and go silent. However, if you put a meter across it with a very high impedance like 10 mega-ohms I would expect that meter set to AC would register a few millivolts. So put the speaker somewhere at different distances maybe 1 ft, 3 ft and 6 ft. Measure the AC voltage by connecting each lead of the meter across each of the speaker terminals. Red to red and black to black if your terminals are color coded on the speaker. The reading will likely flicker around a bit, but record it at each distance. You would expect the voltage level to fall as you move further from the amp.
I agree, but a Fluke 87 is about $500. For someone not owning one and apparently needing at most some basic use the $35 meter will do. We don't need 20 khz in this particular instance. I forget, but I've measured one of the Klein meters finding it 3 db down at 4khz or something like that. As you see in my last post maybe just listening to the disconnected speaker is dead simple, costs nothing and accomplishes what is needed.
