classe ca 200 running too hot?

HOW MUCH WOULD YOU CONSIDER TOO HOT! CLASSE AMPS ARE BIASED AB AND SHOULD'NT BE EXCESSIVELY WARM. I CURRENTLY OWN TWO CLASSE FIFTEEN (WHICH I'M WORKING ON SELLING)THE CA200 PREDECESSOR AND NEITHER RUNS BUT WARM AND IF PLAYED AT MORE CONSIDERABLE LEVELS FOR HOURS...WELL THEN JUST HOT, BUT YOU CAN LEAVE YOUR HANDS ON THE TOP OR BETWEEN THE SINKS WITHOUT BEING BURNT OR FEELING THE NEED TO PULL AWAY. I ALSO OWN A CA400 AND THE SAME HOLDS TRUE GENERALLY FOR THIS PIECE EXCEPT IT WILL REMAIN AT WARM LEVELS MUCH LONGER AND ONLY AFTER MANY HOURS BECOMES HOT AND THEN I WOULD SAY IT RUNS A BIT HOTTER THAN THE FIFTEENS. PERHAPS YOU SHOULD CALL AND DISCUSS THIS WITH ROBERT THE TECHNICAL DIRECTOR FOR CLASSE..IVE FOUND HIM TO BE VERY INFORMATIVE AND EASY TO SPEAK WITH. GOOD LUCK WITH YOUR INQUIRY/CONCERN.

I generally agree with the above. I own a revised CA-200 and find that it feels pretty hot occasionally (even without music being played) but that is a level of hot like, "As a cold-blooded lizard, I enjoy lying on this odd looking rock" rather than, "Well doc, I set my hand on the amp and that's why I am here."

Pehare, mine runs hot to the touch also and I've never had any trouble.

Mine runs hot after playing hard. You can just barely hold your hand on the heat sinks.

sounds like your using shitty Mit ic's and standard pc . Try some good silver ic's and a better power cord and the ca200 should run a little cooler. good luck

Got nothing to do with it, useless advice.

dedicated line won't hurt either pops , i thought you knew something (less resistence)

dedicated line won't hurt either pops , i thought you knew something (less resistence)

Try checking bias. Should be 24-26mV after warm-up. Mine ran really hot at 39mV. Now it's just warm.

I hope he fixed it,15 years is a long time to live with that problem.

yes LOL..The overheating of the amp was because of the use of Goertz speaker cables which can be problematic with some amps. Sold the cables & eventually sold the amp, Happy ending.

High capacitance speaker cables can cause some SS amps to oscilate. This can cause them to heat up or even blow.

Look for speaker cables with a capacitance of around 35pf/meter or less.

Van den Hul d352 is one such cable as well as NAIM NAC A5 (the lowest I've heard of) and KLE Innovations gZero2 or gZero6 to name but a few.

NAIM amps (which I have) can also suffer oscillation - that's how I heard about it

Hope this helps

I tried the CA200 with some ML Quests, and it had the odd behavior of dimming the lights on loud passages, so it seemed a little different than just underpowered. When I went to the CA300 I never saw the problem again.