Improvements we made include:

• Stronger build for road-worthiness
  Yes - we have been known to throw MC-76's or rack them in road cases and drop them off loading docks to test how much abuse they can take. We have bent some front panels and destroyed some meters doing this but the units always worked post-throw. Almost always anyways... one of the girls had a really bad day and got a little carried away on one of the test pieces ­ she eventually wrapped it around a pipe. There are limits if you bend your unit up trying to reproduce these tests we will NOT replace the bent parts and busted meter for free.
• Heavy Gauge Stainless Steel Case
  We went with the new material mostly for strength but quite commonly we see rusted chassis in the original units and the stainless won't do that
• Toroidal Power Transformer for lower field emission and induced noise
• XLR I/O Connects for easy signal interface ­ we have always hated barrier strips and have added XLR's to plenty of the original units, they're even pin 2 hot.
• IEC Power Inlet for easy power interface make changing cable length and type much easier
• Built in Stereo Adapter ­ we saw no reason to make users pay extra for the stereo adapter and since it is built in to every MC-76 you can gang multiple units together for multi-channel buss limiting
• Sealed Multi-Turn Internal Calibration Pots were changed from open single turn types to sealed multi turn types so FET Bias, Meter Null and Distortion Null calibrations are easier to set and tend not to drift
• Audio & Chassis Grounds are on separate lugs for easy integration no matter what your system ground scheme is
• Relocation of Output Transformer from main circuit board to case
  We've seen many vintage 1176/1176LN's come in that fell or were dropped - many of these had cracked or broken circuit boards from an output transformer that kept going when the box and circuit board ceased moving
• Improved Heat Sinks on the stud mounted zener diode shunt voltage regulator and T0-5 2N3053 output transistor
  We've seen quite a number of units with burn marks around this part so we added a 1/4" thick 1/2" wide steel heat sink so the zener runs cooler and is more stable and the single element Class A output gets hot and expires in older units without this heat sink
• Double Sided Printed Circuit Board with Ground Plane for lower noise
• Circuit Board Stiffener to reduce board flex and consequent damage
• 1% Metal Film Resistors for tighter tolerances and consistent sound
• Panasonic HFS Low-Impedance 105°C Capacitors in the audio path between amplifiers are far superior electrolytic capacitors for audio than those originally used in the vintage units
  Note: the HFS series was obsoleted by Panasonic. They were replaced in the MC77 by Elna RJB/RJH series.
• Panasonic Snap Mount TSNH Long Life 105°C Capacitors for power supply filtering have a great mechanical connection to the PCB and have a lower impedance than those originally used in the vintage units
• Bridge Rectifier RF Filter Caps for improved noise performance
• Additional local power supply decoupling around every amplifier for improved damping and overshoot reduction
• True ANSI Specification VU Meter is better damped and gives much more information about what is going on in level and gain reduction monitoring. This meter is also more robust than those used in the original units so it was well worth the added cost
• Improved VU Meter Illumination made standard on MC-76's after serial number 350, the original "#1819" lamp needed to be replaced too often so we went over to using LED clusters... so if you have an MC-76 with a lower serial number the upgrade is free, just contact us (We would also be happy to make someone a deal on a large quantity of #1819 3000-hour incandescent lamps)