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1990s Power Amplifiers

slofut said:
What car is that in your avatar, I'm not sure? Is it yours?
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1956 MGA with Fiberfab Jamaican body and a GM 3.4 V6 driveline - another hobby of mine.

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Yeah, it is one of the very few kits cars that I can stomach. The designers made very wise choices on glass and angles for the body - so many others used stock glass from another car and then mounted it at odd angles so that it just looked...odd.

And they started making these body kits in 1967 (the MGA had been discontinued after 1962) so less than a decade. Windshield is C2 Corvette (1963-67), rear window is 911 Porsche and side glass comes from Karmann Ghias.

I have owned many MGAs and raced one for 20 years so I was naturally tempted by this one.

If you are interested the build is documented here https://www.rhodoworld.com/Jamaican.html and here http://www.britishv8.org/MG/BillSpohn.htm
 
Big Power in Class A/B
Krells KST design , 1 ohm stable 1200 wpc
It pretty much smokes my SUMO 9 class A in sonics...Key with Krell..drive its signal using a cascade tube chain, not solid state..
QSC MX dual mono blocks..class AB
They have a sweet edge against Bryston and 2 ohm stable..Best bang for the buck since they literally used thousands of them in commercial theaters and often found costing 1/5 the cost of new and half the cost of my Threshold S400 and better sounding espy in high signal gain use..
 
If anyone ever sees the first amp that David Belles designed, called simply the 'Belles A', consider grabbing it. Great sound 70 W per side but never runs out of steam - only caveat is that the power switch seems to weld itself together with the turn-on rush - I ended up running mine via a power bar. Stable into 1 ohm loads but I believe only a couple of hundred (or less) were made, so rare today.
 
Anything made by Accuphase usually give all others in their class a run for their money.

The original C200 and P300 series have been used in the most discerning recording studios since 1973 for a reason.

I have the last of this series, the C250 and P350, which were made in the '90's, and they seriously whoop nearly all contenders in the under $20k class quite readily.
 
wspohn said:
I also run large, hot Classe amps ( bridged mono DR3-VHC) in one system - 200 lbs plus of radiant heat. But they still sound very good indeed.
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This is my favourite Classé amp from the 90's - the CA400. That was when Classé were at their peak imho. Run in parallel bridge mode, they were a power house and had that classic Classé sound.

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bigcaps said:
QSC MX dual mono blocks..class AB
They have a sweet edge against Bryston and 2 ohm stable..Best bang for the buck since they literally used thousands of them in commercial theaters and often found costing 1/5 the cost of new and half the cost of my Threshold S400 and better sounding espy in high signal gain use..
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Pardon the year-old bump, I just came across this thread while thinking about a better amp to drive my Dahlquist DQ-28s. I was vaguely aware of QSC as a PA amp brand, but this has really piqued my interest. You're saying these MX700s and MX1000s (that all look to have been pulled from cinemas) can make music? Because they are cheap and plentiful...like 100€ cheap. For that price it's worth risking it just to see how they do, I guess.
 
At the lower $100 +/- price point, if you don't need massive power but want clean power there are a lot of 90's options. The 90's brought about the earliest surround sound formats. Seems that everyone jumped into 3.1 units (either amps or receivers) and just as quickly went to more enhanced formats (5.1 and / or the various Video compliant formats).

Anyway, there are a bunch of those old 3.1 and basic 5.1 format units that can push 100 WPC cleanly in stereo mode. Units that retailed at much higher prices when new, and now get no respect. Similarly, preamps are available. A Sony TA-E2000ESD that originally went for $2kcan now be had for a song.
 
AlanInSitges said:
Pardon the year-old bump, I just came across this thread while thinking about a better amp to drive my Dahlquist DQ-28s. I was vaguely aware of QSC as a PA amp brand, but this has really piqued my interest. You're saying these MX700s and MX1000s (that all look to have been pulled from cinemas) can make music? Because they are cheap and plentiful...like 100€ cheap. For that price it's worth risking it just to see how they do, I guess.
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High quality pro amps are the best kept secret in hifi, although prices are starting to rise as people realise how good some can be. Check out the TOA P300D, I have a pair of them in my collection and would put them up against any of these high $$ boutique amplifiers.

Some to look out for are
Yamaha PC2602
Yamaha PC2002
Meyersound MS1000 (incredibly rare, weighs an absolute ton and has a really noisy fan but sounds incredible)
Hafler XL600 (sounds great, lots of people call this a “beast” when in reality its a bit of a toy compared to the other stuff on this list)
HH V800 (cool LED VU’s)
Anything from the Crown/Macrotech series
Anything Labgruppen, very expensive for a reason.
BGW also made loads of really nice power amps in the 70’s
 
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