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Amps from the 1980's -- What gear holds up sonically? Reliably?

Hi Everyone,

For me, the 1980s were a real "golden age" of amplifiers. Dr. Leach’s paper on building a low TIM amplifier had been widely distributed and relied on by budding designers, and lots of boutique brands came. It was also the era of the biggest of the Conrad Johsnon tube amps as well and the invention of the MOSFET.

For me, brands I cared about:

  • Threshold
  • Sumo
  • Perreaux (New Zealand, very pretty)
  • Tandberg
  • Hitachi
  • Kyocera
  • Nikko
  • Krell (of course)
  • CJ
  • ARC
  • Yamaha (professional)
  • Carver
  • Mark Levinson
  • Amber 
  • Tandberg
This was also the speaker era of Snell and Apogee and Martin Logan. I am not sure there would be a Krell today if it wasn't for Apogee's 1 ohm speakers.

I’m curious who is still listening to these vintage pieces, and which brands you think have stood up both in terms of reliability and / or sonics ?
erik_squires

Showing 1 response by skanda

skanda
60 posts
 
I have a vintage audio research d120. It was recapped in 2008. I got it for a song from audiogon when I was building my very first system. 

Sound is great. Currently powering raidho c1.1 but used to be powering an assortment of dynaudios. This amp doesn't have a great rep but I've read that was mostly because of a bias towards arc tube amps - pun intended, I suppose​.

I swapped an ayon spirit 3 into my system and while it was nice (very nice at that!)...for my preferences the arc was better. That's a testament to how they built this monster. It is a bit of a pain not having an on/off switch and needing to plug it into to the wall to turn it on and vice versa for off.

Klaus over at Odyssey is building me a completely maxed out kismet in a stratos case. I expect it to be a worthy upgrade over this wonderful amp - frankly, from what I can gather, the amp is much older than me!!
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