Yamaha CA-1000

Serial No. 12934

 Professional Restoration with full Recap and Audiophile Modifications.

MSRP $600, Circa 1973

Cost Adjusted for Inflation $4200 2025

$1277

FMI HiFiHealthCare@Gmail.com

It Was 1973 and the absolute glory days for HiFi where the top manufactures were still run by Engineers and they were all competing for to dog in their field.

Pride meant more than profit in these days and the level to detail some manufacturers were engaged in would start to disappear only a short decade in the future…this is the time period of audio that makes some of us reminisce in ways that warm the heart.

Despite it’s relatively modest size and sleek design, you know this amp is packing some serious iron when you go to pick it up and unexpectedly pull out your back!

The build and serviceability of this piece is top notch and a favorite here for restoration work having done at least a dozen of them throughout the years. More often than not, this model amp is filling the shop with beautiful music.

The CA-1000 particularly stands out as a very rare example of pure Class A operation in a market that was starting to get into the “My Watt is bigger than your Watt” mentality but the designer of this model was a purist and wanted to offer a ‘next level’ consumer grade amplifier as a niche in the robust HiFi market of the day.

In addition to pure class A, one can choose Class A/B topology and the amp comfortably will give you 75 Watts per channel all day long or 

15 watts Class A until your room gets too warm to enjoy listening to the stereo anymore!...in our testing we easily got it cleanly to 18 watts class A both channels driven ;) In the final testing below, the CA-1000 went above and beyond giving us over 120 Watts of clean power into 4 ohms!

The mechanical assembly stands out with high attention to detail in design where low level gain stages are enclosed in separate metal housings keeping the overall noise floor very low.

The phono stage is smartly designed right at the RCA input for the purest signal path for the hardest level signal to purely amplify while also decoding the RIAA curve with accuracy and High Fidelity.

Once rebuilt and modified with Poly Stack Film caps at the cartridge input, this phono section really performs and has a very low floor, and great dynamics.

This unit was actually acquired directly from Japan and is marked at 100VAC but has been internally converted to 120VAC. There is some nice gear in Japan left from this era and when you are fortunate to find a piece that came with worldwide transformer taps, it makes things nice!

Of course, nothing lasts forever and that even goes for such a well built and designed piece such as the CA-1000. Through the years, repair techs see trends with different models of gear and many times modifications are made as a result to improve reliability. 

This Yamaha is no exception and it became apparent over time that they had inadvertently built a self destruct button into this amplifier by way of the Class A / B switch on the front panel. 

Of course they assume people would read the owners manual and never switch that control while the amp is playing right?!...anyway we address this in the restoration with upgraded replacement for the dual transformer switches that are behind that control. Despite this, same rule applies to never switch modes while the amp is playing but at least you know there is zero abuse on that control as it leaves our facility.

One of the biggest killers of vintage amplifiers is the deterioration of heatsink compound resulting in a loss of adequate heat removal from the power devices ultimately creating an avalanche effect and destruction of the devices. 

We have modified this piece by stripping all the output devices and associated heatsinks clean and upgrading the thermal management away from the old mica and paste method to long life SilPads that are state of the art thermal management now. Being proactive with such important details insures the reliability and protection of one of the most precious devices in this amplifier, the original Sankens!

All of the 50 year old electrolytics were replaced/upgraded and Metalized Stacked Film Poly Capacitors were used throughout the signal path for high accuracy (1%) and longevity.

Most “Recap” jobs seldom see the main power rail capacitors replaced and people often cite “They test good”. Most of these claims are based on the result of a $50 meter that only tells part of the story, seldom if ever do you see leakage testing done. 

When you test these devices for leakage they almost always show their age and leakage is a far worse property in a capacitor that can lead to catastrophic failure. 

The other reason is these are one of the most expensive components to replace!

Standard procedure in a restoration is proper cleaning of controls which is the interface between the user and the electronics and perhaps carry more weight to the satisfaction of the person adjusting the volume or tweaking the loudness curve etc. than all the work that goes on under the cover.

“Proper” does not mean spraying a can of deoxit all over the place insitu in a less than adequate approach. 

NOooo... that may chase a dirty contact away for a month or 2 and muck up the whole interior of a valuable antique with all the overspray and dirty runoff that comes off the controls into the chassis. 

Proper means component removal and at least 3 ‘flushes’ followed up with the appropriate prophylactic for longevity be it D100 or F5 as the case may be applied directly to the contacts, wipers and tracks maintaining the integrity of shaft lubrication in the process.

As HiFi changed there were some goods and some bads…one of the goods was the development of the Universal Binding Posts for speakers. We modified this piece with high quality Gold plated posts for a premium contact interface to the last link in your chain, your speakers.

Our objective when a piece of gear leaves our shop is that it meets or exceeds the manufactures original specifications and the proactive work insures reliability as good or better as the day it left the factory.

The proof is in the pudding and as our final testing shows, this rebuild now exceeds the factory specification by a wide margin.

DC Offset and Bias was set as per factory calibration procedure. Using the modified precision trimmer pots that were installed on the Final board made the procedure a snap!

Factory Power Rating at 1khz into 8 ohm load is 75 Watts in Class B operation, this amp achieved over 90 watts, effectively over 30% better!

The Factory spec into a 4 ohm load with both channels driven is 100 Watts but we bettered that by over 20% as well at 123 Watts, both channels driven!