Quad ESLs - your amplifier experiences

Sam Tellig of Stereophile famously liked the 1st generation Adcom GFA-535 on the ESL-63's. His revue probably sold tens of thousands of them.

Well that’s interesting!!

I have an Adcom GFA-535II and I have been considering upgrading it thinking it wasn’t much to brag about. It’s presently paired with a Musical Fidelity A3cr Preamp. I better look up the reviews on it again and see whether I am short changing it a bit.

But I do have Quad ESL-63s sitting in my living room. It would never in a million have occurred to me to try the Adcom with the Quads. So what is so great about the 535?

To the original question, I bought the Quad Preamp and the Quad pro amp with the speakers. I thought they sounded fine, but my audio guy, who is British and tends to like British gear, didn’t think much of the Quad pre and amp, so at his urging I bought an Audiomat Arpege tube receiver which sounded beautiful with them, and later upgraded to an Audiomat Prelude Reference MKII tube Receiver which brings out more detail I think.

I hesitated spending so much on the Prelude so I pulled out my old Pioneer SX-1050 and did some A/B testing and I thought my old Pioneer sounded great with the Quads. But I did buy the Prelude as the Pioneer was not well suited to a lot of sources; it expected tape decks and turntables.
 
I've had lots of Quad gear over the years, speakers and electronics. I never liked the pre and power amps from Quad very much, various models. I always found alternatives that sounded much better. The only exception were the original Quad II tube monoblocks designed for the 57s — sound quality is subjective, but build quality is not. A look inside the Quad IIs is very impressive, their SS amps far less so. Unfortunately the tube amps don't have enough power to drive the 63s.

A poblem with the 57s is their fragility. Overdrive them, just a little, and you can burn holes in the diaphragms. A nightmare to replace. Guaranteed to ruin your day. It's very easy to do with non-Quad amps with high power. One advantage of Quad power amps is they offered (or used to) a simple plug-in limiter circuit that ensured this doesn't happen.

A good friend, a true Quad expert, agreed with all the above, and told me to put a 1.5A fast-blow fuse into the speaker cable — much easier to replace a fuse, and turn the volume down a tad, than to replace an effed treble panel. I suppose, since it's in the signal path, this would be the time to use one of the fancy "Audiophile" fuses.
 
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Unlikely. Peter Walker had moved well beyond tubes by this point, and had earlier proven through blind testing with a panel of "golden ears" that his transistor designs were indistinguishable from his earlier valve amplifiers. He had little patience for subjectivist nonsense.

The QUAD 405, sold from 1975 to 1993, was without doubt the amplifier QUAD would have used, and is ideal for driving the ESL-63's today.

Have heard many a time the 405's working with the ESL's and they made fine companions. This Brit amp also works well with the Wharfes that I use.

Chicks' bang on with his comments.

Q
 
Have heard many a time the 405's working with the ESL's and they made fine companions. This Brit amp also works well with the Wharfes that I use.
Small world. I also used the 405 with my ESL 57s and Wharfale Dovedale 3-ways. Sounded great.

Then I tried other amps. Never went back. Again, the Quad IIs were an exception, and their 15W drove the Wharfdales to call-the-cops levels.
 
Small world. I also used the 405 with my ESL 57s and Wharfale Dovedale 3-ways. Sounded great.

Then I tried other amps. Never went back. Again, the Quad IIs were an exception, and their 15W drove the Wharfdales to call-the-cops levels.


You are back in the will!:biggrin:

The 405's seems to be a military grade build...and cosmetically look that way, eh? They go forever without a hitch, even driven hard.

Q
 
Then please leave me out of your will, lest I inherit your debts. But I appreciate the thought!
 
I owened a pair of Quad 57's back in my single days. I ran the through an MX110z and MC225. They were magic in imaging and sound. After a couple years I got tired of the compressed sound of the 57's and sold them. I still have the MX110 and MC225 20+ years later.
 
You may know this already — Whichever amp you use, power output must be limited. The 57s were designed for the Quad II 15W tube amps. I believe the max upper limit is 50W. When Quad launched their 100W power amp, the 405, they provided limiters for use with 57s. And old panels can't even take 50W. I have burned 57's panels by exceeding those limits. Large black holes burned right through the diaphragms, and parts of the stators melted. Horrible experience. And today it's difficult and expensive to repair the damage.
 
A little late to this party but...
My favorites with stacked 57's
Hadley 601
Atmasphere MA1.2
Futterman H3a
Sherwood S5500 or S5000
Mac 225
modified Allen Organ 20A
modified Heath W5
modified Monarchy SM70 (original) cheap & good
 
I will share a couple more. The failure of my PrimaLuna Dialogue Premium power amp has required me to employ alternatives. First was a Topping TP21, a chip amp with a Virginia Slims sized adapter. Sense of space retained, but with an edgy top end. Workable. I tired of the edge however, and dug out a HT amp, the 5-channel Marantz MM9000. The edge is gone, the bass is tuneful and forceful (THX!), but the soundstage and separation shrank. It is the preferable compromise for me, of the two, however.

I could measure that shrinkage with a tape-measure, I swear.
 
1) Sense of space retained, but with an edgy top end. Workable.
or
2) The edge is gone, the bass is tuneful and forceful (THX!), but the soundstage and separation shrank.

If you are not planted listening seriously to the imaging, #2 is so much better than #1. When you not looking at the imaging all it needs to do is sound good and #2 seems to do that. #1 would not be an option if something else was available. In general, it has to sound good before it has to paint a picture. I can't stand rigs that induce listening fatigue even though I know some love that sound.
 
If you are not planted listening seriously to the imaging, #2 is so much better than #1. When you not looking at the imaging all it needs to do is sound good and #2 seems to do that. #1 would not be an option if something else was available. In general, it has to sound good before it has to paint a picture. I can't stand rigs that induce listening fatigue even though I know some love that sound.
Agreed.
 
I finally got around to trying a G.A.S. Grandson on the ESLs, and their mojo is back! I am astounded at how much the Grandson sounds like the Luxman and PrimaLuna tube amps. It has a crystalline treble, perhaps not as liquid, but the separation is what amazed me - airy, spacious, and open.

At first I was afraid of trying them because of their age, so I took a look:


Looks OK, so then I tried them on my DIY two-ways, watching for smoke and listening.


Then the Quads with lamp cord, still no smoke. Finally with the Goertz wires, and the same setup but replacing the Marantz MM9000 that I was using for temporary duty. Well, I should have done this long ago! I think that I've solved my backup amp problem, so I can take my time fixing the PrimaLuna, which I still have hopes for getting going again. Or the Grandson could serve as a permanent solution even. It's that good with the Quads, to my ears so far. Extremely revealing. The two-ways were oddly diminished in comparison. My pride took a hit, I must admit. I might even have to open the last of my Lepai 2020A+ chip amps to see if it is as particularly suitable for my two-ways as I remember it to be.



Back to the point, the separation of the Grandson/Quad combo reproduced a momentary bit of sibilance from my getting-on-in-years Benz Micro as sonic artifacts located in front of the speakers. In my setups the Quads have always imaged from the speaker plane backwards, never in front. I happened to visualize the bit of sibilance as if it was coming from clusters of crystals in front of the program image. Two feet long, officer.
 
Well, I suspected that this was too good to be true. Intermittent popping noises from the Grandson.

<sigh>

At least the Quads are OK.
 
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