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The greatest amps circa 1977-80?

jhoyt said:
The difficulty with a thread like this is that there is no real consensus. For every person who loves the McIntosh 2105, someone else will say it's not deserving the hype and expense. And this is true for nearly every amp out there, outside of say, Accuphase. We all have our personal favorites, but VERY FEW have had an opportunity to spend time with all the top-tier vintage amps, where they can render judgment from a position of knowlege, rather than speculation and favoritism.

I suppose we could throw all the TOTL models from this era into a hat and say, "These are the Greatest Amps", and then everybody picks their favorite flavor.

The problematic question is what makes one amp "better" than another? THD and WPC? Warmness? Smoothness? Tonal accuracy? Durability? Ease of servicing? Each of these positions have their proponents. The Official Cliche of AudioKarma is "Whatever sounds good to you". And in this case, it definitely applies.
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Re what is best etc. If this was a car race it would be easy but since we are talking about something that embodies personal preferences it becomes very difficult, so whatever pleases you will be ok, then there is the matter of cost, not everybody can afford Krell or Threshold or Mark Levinson etc. So considering your pocketbook there are lots of good products out there that provide one with musical bliss.
 
No love here for the Sony TA-N86B? Have mine hooked up to the TA-E86B preamp and the combo sounds wonderful - to my ear better even than my much loved Yamaha CA-1010.
 
The Bedini 25/25 and 45/45 amps were made in the late 70's. Advertised as 'class A', I bought the 45 to use as a back up if something should go 'bump in the night' with my Pass amps. Nothing has gone wrong with any of them in 10 yrs. The 45 produces a very nice sound.

You don't see them for sale often and when you do, they aren't that expensive. I'd recommend them.

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I am astounded by the separation and imaging of the G.A.S. Grandson in my system. Open, airy, spacious sound of the kind that I last heard with my PrimaLuna and Luxman tube amps. A little more crystalline, but not at all edgy, and very revealing.
 
Thats the period of time when Mac tube owners were holding on very tightly to their tube stuff. You think modern amps are cold , thats what Mac owners thought of all the SS stuff from the Orient. A lot of them didn't think much of the Mac SS amps either. But they were were very warm for SS from that period. Mac owners of today buy new Mac tube stuff either amps, pre-amps, or both to return to the days of more life like sound reproduction that the early SS stuff from Mac produced in some ways and capture the sound with improvements of the original tube stuff. Just try to find a pair of MC 30's or MC 3500's now days. . If you can find them they are quite pricey. Some one is asking $59.000.00 for a pair of MC 3500's. A pair of restored MC 30's about a 1/10 that much. $6000.00
 
Audio Research Corporation D-150.

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Plugin said:
sfox52,

what's a BGW500D?
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BGW 500D- Originally intended as a pro audio amp, but one that proved to be of pretty exceptional sound quality for an amp of that type.

bgw_500d_power_amplifier.jpg

I would have to put in a mention of a different pro-audio (actually, it was originally primarily intended for use in recording studios and movie theaters) amp of this era- the JBL/Urei 6260. That amp could hang with ANYTHING of that era. I've compared it to even more modern amps (Levinson, HK Citation, Adcom, Aragon, etc), and it's never been embarrassed by anything.

jbl6260-1.jpg

The 6260 was the result of a collaboration between Bill Putnam of UREI and Matti Otala of Harman/JBL, and incorporates much of Otala's work on low-TIM amp design that he had come up with, in his collaboration with Dr. Wm. Marshall Leach of Georgia Tech. As such, it's a VERY transparent amp for its size and power (150 watts per channel into 8 ohms, 300w/ch into 4 ohms). Effortless dynamics, very good bass control and reach, and very low noise. I can't think of another "pro-audio" amp that sounds significantly better than this, ever...

Factory data sheet on the 6260:

http://www.jblpro.com/pub/obsolete/6200ser.pdf

Regards,
Gordon.
 
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We had a number of BGW amps in clubs installed by others and they all failed! They were using the same output transistors as Mac was using in the 2105's and 2300's with out cooling and autoformers and the amps would over heat and just die. The amps were biased differently and were just warmer from the get go. Because they were pushing the outputs the over all distortion was two or 3 times higher than Mac amps. That really caused audio philes to scratch their heads. Mac amps had to have more distortion because of those ugly autoformers. Every BGW that ever came to a Mac clinic never performed as owners thought they should. E ven ARC amps didn't either. If you would look at the output of a ARC tube amp back in the 80's and 90's if you backed off from rated power till they stopped oscillating at very high frequencies they would or come very close to meeting their specs. I was always amazed how many SS devices were in their big mono tube amps.
 
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Fleischer said:
No love here for the Sony TA-N86B? Have mine hooked up to the TA-E86B preamp and the combo sounds wonderful - to my ear better even than my much loved Yamaha CA-1010.
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I got the love. Any of the esprit amps are great. The N86/E86 combo for the price is very hard to beat
 
Fleischer said:
No love here for the Sony TA-N86B? Have mine hooked up to the TA-E86B preamp and the combo sounds wonderful - to my ear better even than my much loved Yamaha CA-1010.
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ebk231 said:
I got the love. Any of the esprit amps are great. The N86/E86 combo for the price is very hard to beat
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I don't have firsthand experience with the amp but I had the TA-E86B preamp in my system for almost a year. It's a very nice, super well made piece, sounds great. Eventually I preferred the AR SP-6B which I still have.
 
My old roomie and I had a Phase Linear 700 driving four (stacked) Advent Large speakers. We had a rental house, with a basement lounge that was pretty well sound-proofed. That amp performed quite well....
 
Having owned several amps from that era, I can say I liked them all. The one I still own is the MC2205 though, so I suppose that would be the best that I have owned. As far as the best, I haven't had the opportunity to listen to all of them so I don't feel qualified to answer. There are a few I have had that didn't get listed due to the date range.

Heathkit AA-1800
Harman Kardon HK505
McIntosh MC-2205
Phase Linear 400
Nikko TRM-600
Marantz 170DC
Onkyo A-7
Kenwood KA-8100
 
Glad this thread got dusted off and is back up and running. I have owned two of the Amps mentioned here from the time period. Just picked up one that IMO belongs on the list and is squarely in the 77 - 80 time frame. The Audionics CC-2 is a great Amp. Don't let the 70W per channel rating fool you, this Amp will drive almost any speaker with authority. It is quiet and presents a nice clear sound stage with enough space for multiple instruments and vocals. It was built to last and be trouble free handling difficult loads, This Amp although hard to find has stood the test of time.
 
This would be 1982, but close enough. Yamaha PC2002M and Yamaha PC5002M. 240 & 500 Wpc respectively. Some heavy iron.
 
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