Harman Kardon Citation 22 No Love?

Laviathon you are correct to an extent. That whole line was a little above average gear. Unfortunately that line suffered from poor assembly line finish and proper testing. You can read many reviews/quotes of owners that had 22's that ran very hot(bias adjusted too high),shut down into protect etc. and eventually owners gave up and hated them. Others loved them and never had an ounce of trouble (me). It seems if you were lucky enough to get a properly set unit,you were ok. Quality control was the problem!! I bought one of the first (22's) to arrive at a store. At 19 yrs.old I purchased my first pr. of JBL's (L150A) new. They definately came to life with the HK however the JBL's were VERY power hungry. A second 22 came along and monoblocked the beasts. Low end was still suffering. A third 22 made for;left and right woofers to have ther own monoblock with a 22 in stereo for mids and tweeters..pretty sick!! However...I was able to purchase a Krell KSA 100 MKII from the original owner twelve yrs. ago cheaper than what I bought a 22 for. That 100 watts of class A put ALL three 22's to shame!! Don't get me wrong the HK's still sounded great (better than alot of other midfi gear)but,when called upon for very low end they couldn't keep up. No I'm NOT a Krell snob!! I own much larger Krells now and my 1st KSA but, still have the (3) 22's,21 and 23. Just passing on my 27 yrs. of audio addiction/passion. At 45 yrs. old I'm probably not even close to being done!!! Always remember to let YOUR ears make the final decision!! P.S. not one of my five Citations ever gave me any problems.

And yet another thing to remember is that these later Citations followed the XX series, which were at the very top of the heap ($7,500 for the amp and $3,500 for the preamp-in 1980!)
I remember HP did a comparo test in The Absolute Sound of all the big amps available at that time and the Citation was the winner, beating them all.
Then Harman bought Mark Levinson, and the Citation line was put on the wayside for a while; then re-emerged at a much lower price point. Hard shoes to fill.
I recently had an urge to go vintage, and I am currently using a CItation 17s preamp and a 16 power amp. Compared to my previous Audible Illusions combo, they don't fare bad at all, there is less palpability and detail, but there is also more musicality; and the 17s phono stage is just as good if not better than the Modulus standard phono stage.
Yeah, compared to say a Mac, most Citations are I think undervalued and underapreciated. All the better for those who know and want one!

I like my 22s, have 4 of them in my system, seem to work great 1 gets a little hot but not too bad.

Well you all are right about one thing and that is that they sound amazing! Yes they were all biased incorrectly from the factory and the left channel also had to have a mod done on it as there were some errors on the main PC board on how the L ch. Bias circuit is configured. I have a few of these amps and all have been re- biased and modified and now they run just barely warm and they are so reliable.

They have an incredibly warm sound. One can listen to music for hours and not have any listening fatigue. Even the Citation 21 Pre-amp matches so well with it.
I'm very happy to own these classic 80's audio gear.

I don't have any experience w/H-C Citation amps but did note that Jim McShane appears to work with Citation gear. Check out his website. I think it's a mod/upgrade offering but not sure. In any event, it seems to me he wouldn't work with the brand unless there was some inherent quality.