Yes, all electronic equipment needs periodic maintenance.

Pretty much everything made by humans needs some form of periodic maintenance or service, and complex electronic equipment containing hundreds of parts, assemblies and mechanical bits, often operating decades past its intended design life, is certainly no exception.

Design Life

Manufacturer-specified maintenance information is often found in the service documentation associated with a piece of equipment. The work needed takes the form of cleaning, electronic and mechanical adjustment and parts replacement necessary to keep equipment running reliably.

This maintenance is what was thought would be needed over the projected design life of the equipment though. When this equipment was designed and built, nobody imagined that it would still be working, let alone cherished and sought after, 30, 40, or even 50 years later. Incredible when you think about it and this certainly doesn’t apply to anything you buy new now.

There’s often very little maintenance information accompanying consumer-level gear like this anyway, a reflection of the nature of the equipment and its predicted lifespan. The extended life much of this equipment enjoys is usually well beyond its intended design life and the ongoing maintenance needs are simply not covered by any service data.

Keeping these pieces running requires experience and an understanding of how equipment ages. Many of these techniques have been pioneered and developed by Liquid Audio and others in this space, over the years. I use many service procedures, chemicals, parts and lubricants that manufacturers never made public, and I’ve simply had to reverse-engineer them as required.

Magic Smoke

Owners of hi-fi equipment are often unaware of these maintenance requirements, or that electronic components degrade over time. Eventually, mechanical parts seize or fail and the ‘magic smoke’ is released from electronic components, leaving hi-fi equipment no longer functional. *

Having established that all hi-fi equipment needs maintenance, the more complex it is, the more maintenance it needs. Turntables and cassette decks are generally the most maintenance-intensive, followed by amplifiers, CD players, tuners, preamps and then things without knobs, like DACs, roughly in that order.

I’ve written more about how and why electronic equipment needs periodic maintenance here and here. Periodic maintenance reduces the likelihood and potential severity of equipment failure and dramatically improves its performance. Whatever you do, just have the work done by someone competent. Your equipment will eventually fail if you don’t maintain it.

* When magic smoke is released from an electronic part, that part is broken forever. Magic smoke cannot be ‘re-installed’, only new components containing their factory original magic smoke perform to specification.