Servicing, broken wires and surprises

Just had my 72/hicap/140 serviced. Nothing unusual there? Maybe, but on sending them off to Class A through Cymbiosis I found they were only 6.5 years from previous service. I had previously had my Nait 1 serviced and returned (maybe 29 years since any attention!) to fill the gap while the main rig was away and was pleasantly (and profoundly) surprised with the resultant sound quality - in short (after an appropriate run in period of course) it trounced it the 72/hicap/140 on all sources. As a result I went ahead with the service despite the short interval to the last service..

Once the work was done I got next first surprise - both snaics were pronounced faulty. This may well explain some of the poor sound quality after such a short time, and I replaced both obviously (despite a surprisingly high cost of £180 each!) and hoped for significant benefits later.

The next surprise came while taking the Nait out to re-install the 72/hicap/140 - the earth wire on the leads from my LP12, always rather delicate looking, broke at the spade connector. On it's own this is not beyond my capabilities to repair, but I felt strongly that this had broken due to the pull from the signal lines on the LP12 connection so figured I should try to check and shorten those at the the same time as repairing the earth. Dismantling the signal BNC connectors soon convinced me of two things - 1) unsoldering and shortening them was beyond my abilities (not to mention my eyesight) and 2) the channel 2 shield connection was, to be polite, rather poor. I repaired the shield connection as best I could (with little confidence of it ever working again) and resoldered the earth to a new spade connector. 

The good news is the LP12 signal is fine - the surprise(?) this time is the improvement in sound quality is - to me - remarkable! And that also applies to all inputs, after little more than 3 hours of playing time too.

Many thanks to CLass A and Cymbiosis for once again providing first class service and renewing my faith in 30ish year old equipment to be all the hifi I will ever need!