It was pretty damn loud I can tell you that.. but surprisingly i couldn't hear any distortion. Of course I had the 901's shut off.. they can't handle that. Speaking of them, this thing does a great job of powering them! It makes them actually sound really good! Even the girlfriend liked it. The Cerwin Vega's are pretty decent for what they are, IMO they sound really well. I'm thinking it's a pretty good match for now...but I'd like to find some really good 8 ohm speakers to reduce some of the load. Not all of us have a 5000 watt amp to play around with
As far as ones that have come up for sale.. it doesn't happen very often. I've seen two in the last couple years, and they've all been from AKer's. What they sold for was more than twice what I paid, but I got really really lucky.
I can imagine it was an impressive amount of volume for sure. Yeah basically when you get big peaks, particularly of anything bass heavy, it will have a massive current demand and thats why it shuts down.......
You wont hear the distortion because those amplifiers basically have next to no distortion at full power, that was something Sansui did extremely well with their amps, they had very very low distortion, I might be wrong, but I believe the 33000 has the lowest distortion of any Sansui in that era....
I think you could benefit from doing something like I have, split the load up, if you like the music fat like I do, it uses an enormous amount of power in the Low department.....
I think going 8 ohms will help, but I wouldnt be surprised if it still cuts out, I suspect you like it to pack a punch right?
If you like it like that, really the only way is to do what I did, High Pass the full range speakers with an active crossover and use a bigger amp something around 600watts per channel to drive some subs. That way you wont run out of headroom in the low end which then causes the amp to have the current protection kick in (if the amp didnt have it you would probably blow up output transistors all the time).....and if you get a good quality crossover you can set some limiting up so you dont blow anything up.....speakers and amps.......
Might be worth thinking about.......
I am lucky to have access to the gear I do, running a Sound company has its benefits.
I couldnt afford to buy a Crown myself, they cost nearly $10,000NZ.....they are a real beast......very lucky to have one here......
They are however a beautiful and incredibly musical sounding amplifier.....I would buy one if I could...
