20 Vintage Amps That Prove They Really Don’t Make Them Like They Used To

I have a Futterman Harvard Music H3a. Mine is a bit different than the photo here. Just a pair of HB5 pentodes connected to an Altec autoformer per channel. This was a special order to drive a low impedance speaker system. I bought it from the original owner who used it in the 60’s.

The Futterman OTL is NOT a circlotron! It is a totem - pole arrangement with one half of the output stage as a cathode follower and the other half having unity gain. Julius used 60db of feedback to reduce distortion and lower output impedance to make his circuit work with 8 ohm speakers.

@atmasphere + 1

The design of many of these amps is timeless & in many ways as good as almost anything today. The parts quality on the other hand is all over the place w/ some good & some not great that can be really improved w/ better parts which many people have done.

The Conrad Johnson Premier Four which I owned in 1985 was probably the best 3 dimensional imaging amp I’ve ever heard & beautiful mid range & tone if not slightly  rolled off in the extreme frequencies. The Dyna Stereo 70 I grew up w/ was overall similar sound just much less power. Both are true classics! 

As with many things, we are nostalgic for days gone by.  However, I feel it would also be true to say "they sure didn't build things back then like they do today".  As knowledge and materials have improved over time, it would be unreasonable to think the best of anything made today, does not exceed the best of yesteryear.    

All these amps were excellent designs for their days but many of them had negatives too. Parts are way better today(except possibly NOS tubes) and power supplies which are the true heart of an amplifier are way stronger today. Plus I'd never get near a non-linear single ended amp(Ongaku) that can't even produce a proper sine wave into a load(the negative half is not the same as the positive hald and that's endemic in singled ended topology).

Perhaps though we got more per dollar then(even with inflation figured in) in the old days given the zillion dollar costs of many of today's amps. And I did own a Stereo 70 and 1st generation ARC amps(mu Dual 70 was by far the least reliable amp I ever owned).