# there was a soundstream continuum (reference 705) in the car i bought.



## Illinest (Nov 12, 2013)

First i'll give you a chance to laugh at me. 
I bought an 86 corvette about 10 years ago. (That wasn't the joke yet) I didn't check any of the sound parts but i knew the radio wasn't working at all when i bought it. At the time i knew relatively little about car audio. The speakers were a brand i didn't recognize and i thought they might be blown. I threw out 4 MB Quart speakers. I didn't recognize the head unit but it annoyed me because it beeped every time you changed the volume. It was some generic sounding japanese brand called nakamichi. Trashed it. 
I bought and had a Rockford Fosgate head unit installed. Hey I heard of that brand at least. The tech who did the install didn't look at the amp either, and i thought he was trying to be a jerk when he told me that the audiocontrol four.1 half-din equalizer was the best piece of equipment in the car. (He was almost right)
Then i went to best buy and got some sweet (not sweet) infiniti speakers, plugged them in and found that the system sounded pretty good. Not a week had passed before one of the speakers popped but i was getting 3 speakers to work so i said "eh - forget about it" and i drove it that way for a long time. I never looked at the amp.

Fast forward to 2005 or so. By now most of the infiniti speakers had gone bad. I went to another installer and asked him to install some slightly more informed speaker choices (memphis audio and cdt). He did the work and then he told me he had bad news. One of the memphis speakers had blown right away. He said he measured straight dc coming from the amp and that he'd found a ton of water in the speaker well. I finally took interest in the amp long enough to figure out that my convertible corvette had damaged weather stripping and there was water leaking on the amp just about every time it rained.

Disgusted - i said "screw it" again and that was basically the last time i tried to do anything with that car's stereo.

That brings me to today. A different amplifier in my other car just blew up and i'm trying to figure out what i want to do about it. I thought about the amp in my corvette and i said - if i'm going to have an amp repaired then i better check that one to see which one is of a higher quality. By now i have a bit of a clue and so i was interested when i saw that it was an older soundstream. Even more interested when i realized that the continuum was a limited edition that was made back in the day when soundstream was premium. Then i read that it's basically a reference 705 and i'm like "whaaaa?!" Then i realized that it's one of the 1200 chrome finish amps that were distributed in the US. So basically i feel as if i found a unicorn in my car. I guess it might not seem super amazing to anyone else but for a guy who has never spent more than 400 dollars on a single component before it's pretty strange. So first of all - "Sorry for trashing all of your stuff, nameless original owner of the corvette, cause you had good taste and apparently quite a bit of disposable income."

Now - business:
I'm electrically trained enough to check components and that's what i did. I have at least 8 blown transistors in what appears to be the subwoofer part of the amp. I'd love to have some advice about what other components i could or should check out. If there's capacitors that go bad then i should probably look into that. 
Or if it's not too ridiculously expensive i might be able to talk my wife into having it repaired. Can anyone give me an idea of what repairs would cost? I will say that anything over 200 dollars would require me to engage in more of a battle than i'm willing to take on. If i can do it myself for 50 dollars in parts that's one thing, but there's a limit to how much of my family's budget i can devote to my own toys.


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## shawnk (Jan 11, 2010)

It really depends on how far you want to go with the repair. You can do a basic repair and possibly have other problems pop up in the near future, or you can do a full restoration and in some cases make the amp better than day one. My concern for you in this particular situation is if the amp suffered from severe water damage. If so, it "may" not be worth the effort.

I restored a 705s for another member not too long ago. There is a thread in this section with a list of the work done and parts used.

Throw up some pics and it'll help us help you.


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## Illinest (Nov 12, 2013)

Thanks Shawn. I tried to take a few with my cellphone cam but they were nearly worthless. Most of the water problems were located near the access hole over the switches for channel 3 and 4. The plastic cover had been left off and that's where the worst of the water issues seemed to be. The good news is that the amp was mounted upright and it seems that the components mostly didn't have to sit in a pool of water.

I am an industrial electrician and i was formerly an electronics technician in the navy so i am partially trained for this, but there's a lot of lingo and components here that i have never seen or used before. I can definitely pick things up as i go. I can also solder very well when i have the proper tools.

I will check that thread out and i will try to get a few usable photos tonight. Thanks again.


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## shawnk (Jan 11, 2010)

No prob,

Good luck!!


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## Illinest (Nov 12, 2013)

ImageShack Album - 20 images

That's a link to a photo album with 20 pics of various angles, lighting and closeness.

A few things that I'd like to call attention to:
You can see that the main trouble area on the front is the switches for channel 3 and 4. One of them was tight but I worked it out. Come to think of it I was supposed to check the switches for operation but I didn't. Well I'll get that done tomorrow. I did at least remember to operate all of the switches and swipe all of the potentiometers. 

Based on the way the amp seemed to power speakers fine at certain times (but not others) I'm wondering if rain-water was creating paths across the surface. Should I assume that there's actual component damage on this side? I'm thinking about hooking a spare head unit to the amp and then trying to power some speakers that I'm willing to sacrifice. I know I'd be risking the speakers but I'm fine with that. I don't want to risk the head unit on the other hand, so that's more of a concern for me. I'm guessing that it should be fine as long as I can read the proper values on the input jacks but I don't know what those values ought to be. An RCA cable is two conductor per channel is it not? Is it safe to assume that one of those conductors is a neutral or ground?

On the back you can see 8 dead diodes. Those red X's were already there so someone must have torn this apart before me. I don't know what the number 8 and 9 refer to. I noticed that many of the diodes were marked with red or green on the pins. The red ones generally had a slightly different value than the green. IIRC it was something like 650 for the red and 590 for the green.

Oh yeah - I need to refresh. The outside pins would be the collector and emitter, is that correct? I was getting those readings while measuring across the outside pins. I want to make sure I wasn't doing that improperly.

I took a few pictures of an area on the back (left side) where it looks like torn tissue paper? I don't know what that part is supposed to be. Is that a damage trace?


I hope you don't mind answering those questions. I appreciate your help so far.


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## Chaos (Oct 27, 2005)

That is a real shame, because that amp qualifies as a genuine collectors piece at this point. Unfortunately, it appears to be trashed beyond hope of anything other than a full restoration.

If you decide that repairing it is not practical, post a feeler thread. I would trade you a functional 4 channel for that SS right now, even as it sits.


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## Illinest (Nov 12, 2013)

Chaos said:


> That is a real shame, because that amp qualifies as a genuine collectors piece at this point. Unfortunately, it appears to be trashed beyond hope of anything other than a full restoration.
> 
> If you decide that repairing it is not practical, post a feeler thread. I would trade you a functional 4 channel for that SS right now, even as it sits.


I do have a small degree of feels about the issue.

I myself am really into corvettes and i have felt that preservation instinct kick in when i've seen a neglected corvette. Maybe this is just some weird thing about me - i don't know - but i see a thing that's well engineered and hasn't been taken care of and i get a little bit bothered about it. I have a sense that the continuum would be better off with a person who really loves old-school audio, but i do still want to improve my sound system. For example i'm currently using a 40x2 Sherwood amp that was old when i bought it in 1997, a 50x2 Audiobahn and the aforementioned Rockford Fosgate head unit. I was trying to get up into a slightly higher class of equipment when i bought my other failed amp - a cadence zrs c9. I've got a decent set of Rainbow Components that have never really been properly worked out and it has occurred to me that the Continuum is actually pretty close to the pinnacle of my relatively modest desires in terms of the number of channels and the real power output.

My first inclination is still to see what i can do to get this thing working properly. This isn't a trade thread, but if it were a trade thread i'd be inclined to point out that i wouldn't trade a corvette for a kia. Some kind of deal that ended up with a refurbished reference 705 on my end and the continuum plus some cash to make up for the difference in condition on the other end would admittedly capture my interest, but i'd still rather talk about repairing this one right now. Based on my experiences listening to this amp in my corvette I believe that it would put out at least 2 channels of good reliable sound right now and i suspect that i might get all 4 channels. The sub channel is definitely jacked but i am ready to tackle that problem if i can.


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## shawnk (Jan 11, 2010)

Not trying to be a pessimist, but I really do think you have a lot of work ahead.

There are a couple of common issues with your amp (and this generation of Sound Streams in general):

Faulty rectifiers
Poor solder joints on the vertical driver boards for each channel
Faulty switches

On top of that, you have some water damage and at least one resistor (that I can see) that has burnt up.

First thing I would do is remove those rusty switches, remove any components that you know have faulted, remove the vertical boards, and then give the board a really good cleaning. I like to use Simple Green and a toothbrush. Then rinse with distilled water that is shot from a spray-style water bottle. Dry the amp with a hair dryer and make absolute sure that no water is left anywhere on the board (particularly underneath capacitors and other components)

Reinstall the vertical boards and new components. Then test the amp at low volume while having a 2 ohm (at least 10w) resistor inline with the B+ to limit current draw.


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## shawnk (Jan 11, 2010)

Forgot to mention,

There's a seller on ebay that has quite a few parts for these older SS amps (switches, driver boards, rectifiers, hardware etc..)


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## Illinest (Nov 12, 2013)

Sounds like a good starting point.

Well actually step 1 is: Convince wife.

She seemed cool with it this morning so I'm sure she'll come on board.


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## Old Skewl (May 30, 2011)

Good luck! Hope you can salvage it without too much trouble/expense. If it gets out of your league don't be afraid to turn it over to one of the forum gurus to get it straightened out.

BTW, welcome to the forum. We are almost neighbors!!


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## Illinest (Nov 12, 2013)

Thanks Old Skewl. I am definitely excited about the find. My wife seemed to be interested in the trade idea and she did make a good point about the collection that I've assembled. I have 2 small working amps and 2 non-working 4-channel amps, but all I really need is a single 4-channel amp and maybe a separate amp for a small subwoofer.

But then again - I was really glad that I still had the little amps when my Cadence went dead. 

Speaking of Cadence - their customer service never responded to my email. Not good.


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## Illinest (Nov 12, 2013)

I will consider trades if it'll save me the cost of purchasing soldering equipment and parts to do the repairs.
Basically i think i'll be spending at least 100 dollars to get the soldering station and other stuff and that' before i start the work. Not a big deal if i had all of that available already like a few of the techs do, but i don't have any of that stuff.

It doesn't have to be an offer for a reference 705 as i said before but i will do legwork on any proposal that comes around and i won't be willing to unload the amp for just any piece of working equipment. The worst case for me is probably spending 100-200 dollars and some of my time to get the continuum working, so the deal will have to be better than what it would cost me to just fix what i've got. If that makes sense to anyone you can get in contact with me.

One more thing - i'm not interested in shipping. If i decide to make a deal I'll drive a few hours and meet halfway, which means anywhere from maybe boston to cleveland to richmond makes sense.


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## Trishandchris (Apr 6, 2018)

I actually have one of these amps in as close to perfect condition as it gets... I can't seem to find an actual price it would be sold at. But I'm looking to get rid of it.


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## ccm7293 (May 6, 2018)

Trishandchris said:


> I actually have one of these amps in as close to perfect condition as it gets... I can't seem to find an actual price it would be sold at. But I'm looking to get rid of it.


Oh yea? Got some nice pics of it? I just bought one myself and planning on restoring it (not that its in bad shape or anything). I wouldn't mind having 2 

p.s. sorry for the hijack, I'm a sucka for rarity


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