Amplifiers:A Keeper for Life. Do you know of one ?

I never say never, but I don't plan on changing amps soon. As long as 8 watts is adequate, my Audionote Kageki's are a keeper.

I still like my Audionote Kageki amps, although these days, I use a modern version of a Western Electric 133 pushpull amp (uses Western Electric transformers, vintage caps and resistors, and Western Electric 348 and 349 tubes). This amp has 600 ohm input transformers which work well with my linestage which has 600 ohm output transformers.

I recently heard a one of a kind OTL amp that was simply amazing--very dynamic and fast, but still quite smooth and free from brittleness. This is one of the best amps I've heard, but, it takes up WAY too much room and WAY too much $$$.

It was made some time in the 1970's by a Greek audiophile who made several variants of these amps. Two of these amps where brought to the US by a Greek diplomat. One set is a four chassis monster and the other is a two-chassis monster. I believe both put out about 30 watts but they sound much more powerful. The amps are based on a Futterman circuit. Each monobloc has a massive toroidal power transform and essentially two smaller amp modules (smaller toroidal power transformer and set of tubes) that are either bridged or in parallel. I forgot what kind of tubes are in the output; they are some kind of television sweep tube. The tubes are run very conservatively so they last a long time. The previous owner left the amp on essentially all the time for the past 10 years and the tubes still test as good.

The dealer which who recently got the amps in trade for some speakers wanted $50k for the pair of amps.