I keep thinking about doing this. Thank you all for the great welcome and advice. To be honest I've never even hooked up the 700B (not even once) since receiving it in 2018, because I was scared off by the stories of "Flame Linear" and blown speakers, and then after I moved, the amp was simply too heavy to carry up two stories from my basement to hook it up to anything!
I received an email recently from the person who gave me all the stuff that answered some questions I had about the history. It was used by him at low to moderate volume until 2005 when it went into storage. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest and he was a patient of my Dad's who liked me and so he gave it to my Dad to give to me before the guy moved to England. The email recently received confirmed the amp was purchased in Seattle where he picked it up later on as the second owner.
Quote, "the items were never shipped when I owned them. I picked them all up personally and took them to your Dad when I cleared the house. The 700B is so heavy I think you'd know if it had been dropped! It certainly was not shaken in any long-distance transit and was almost certainly purchased new in Seattle where I picked it up." When I get some more time I should snap some pictures of all the gear but it all looks really clean/in great shape cosmetically. That said.....part of the complete WOPL rebuild includes the chassis too, and the 700B is what seems most promising for whavever comes of all this stuff moving forward. Time will tell I suppose.
He didn't remember exactly when he purchased any of the items but told me that in the early '90s when he realized "Bob Carver divorced and developed equipment under his own name, I realized the Phase 1 items I admired wouldn't be available again so I started buying from ads and even advertised in the Seattle Times. Surprisingly I got some responses from people who had sets and wanted to sell as job lots. I finished up buying a pile of different units including 400 amps, preamps, a tape player, an FM unit and a record player but only one 700B....
The cassette tape unit worked well until a rubber belt broke although it had too many other features to be practical."
That's the Model 7000 tape deck in the stash he gave me as well. I had it for a few months with "Nakdoc" before he retired (his shop used to be 7 minutes from my old apartment and was then about 15 minutes from the house later on when I moved) but he didn't have time to get to the 7000 before the doors closed so no restoration work was done on it. Interestingly, right before this past Christmas we got in touch again over the Internet, and we were going to try to get together (he offered to look at the heads to see what kind of shape they're in) but of course then I left town for an extended stay with family and it didn't happen (yet, at least).
In an ideal scenario, I'd have the deck restored and use it for myself but as of right now I still don't know.
From reading the forum archives, it seems that the 4000 preamp (it's a series 1 with the joystick) is not regarded well, and that shipping it usually just leads to more cracked solder joints than before. The 4000 he gave me was serviced in 2014 (the work invoice was kept in the original box) but not fully. "10+ capacitors need to be replaced" is on the invoice next to "customer has decided not to repair at this time." The work that WAS done lists "Repaired the main board, replaced power transistor, repaired cold solder joints, cleaned the controls and switches."
White Oaking the 700 seems attractive since I've never had any high-end hi-fi gear (I'm still using a Sony N110 from the '80s or '90s with bookshelf speakers!). A few years ago I did pick up an APT Holman and had Vince at AudioProz do a full upgrade/restoration on it around early 2021. The APT was a big improvement but obviously I never had any high-end power amps (just that N110 and a bunch of various cheap AV receivers).
At some point I should probably hook up the 4000 anyhow to see what state of functionality it may be in or not. I do have a love for electronics hobby work and actually find soldering FUN (gasp) but realistically, is it worth the time to try to keep a 4000 running or is that just counter-productive and pointless given the design flaws I've read about?
