How do we remember 1970s amplifiers?

Sweet memories....
I owned a Phase Linear 200B (which outperformed a Quad 405 in a straight shoot-out).

My system in 1978 was a GAS Son of Ampzilla, GAS Theadra preamp and a GAS Sleeping Beauty cartridge mounted on a JVC Direct Drive turntable. Speakers were Rectilinear 7's. Never could get the 7's to sound as good or better than the old Rectilinear 3a speakers that I traded them for. I also had a Sansui Tuner which I should have kept.

I loved my GAS electronics, quite smooth yet revealing in their day. The piece de resistance of my system was my Teac reel to reel recorder (can't remember the model).

I was working in retail at a mom & pop audio store so I changed my equipment quite frequently back then.

Kenwood L07M (mono) was reasonable as was the Grandson of Ampzilla. I had heard the ampzilla, it was rough around the edges, I had heard Flame Linear 400 and 700B, harsh.
Pioneer had some old Class A amps that I recall sounding quite nice... They were Series 20 or 30, don't recall exactly.... Compared to today, no contest

Sold my car to buy a high end system as a Freshman in college -1977. Talk about a killer dorm system. First amp was a Phase Linear 400....it flamed (literally) -- However, I thought it sounded very good. Then went with a fabulous Harman Kardon Citaion 16 amp and a GAS Theadra preamp, Dahlquist DQ10's (Denon TT w/ Supex 900 MC cartidge). It was fabulous. The HK amp was a tank and sounded superb. I replaced it with an Ampzilla in the 80's and regretted it. The Ampzilla was always breaking and was not as smooth as the HK...much better mids with the HK. The Ampzilla was very transparent sounding and had major balls in slam and low end energy. BTW, I got the "bug" after owning a nice Yamaha receiver w/ Infinity speakers. The rest is history and am still spending way too much money on stereo gear.

Transaudio-was that Trancendental Audio on the Niagara Blvd?
I remember it well when I was a newbie.

They had some Dan fellow working there that I think tinkered around with amps and may have sold a couple over the years.

I believe he is still at it to this day.

My sonic memory of solid state amps from that era is that they never pleased me as much as the tubed Dynaco amps from a decade before.

I had only experience with solid state amps like mid 70's Pioneer beheamouth receivers, Yamaha A1 integrated.I was a newbie.
Before that it was a mono ,tube system built into a tv console. when I was growing up.

The solid state amps of the day ,never had the same sense of realism as the old tv system had, but it was newer and just had to be better and so I left it at that.I was a newbie.

Then a friend of mine got a used Dynaco stereo 70 and Pas 3 pre amp and his Ls3/5a speakers went to a new level.
We had the same Yamaha intgrated amp and speakers, cables etc.In those days if I heard a sound I liked, then I went out and duplicated it.I was a newbie.

So I went out and got a tubed Dynaco set up and was quite happy.

In retrospect, I should have quit while I was ahead.

But being a newbie, I flitted from one new "best" system to the next, and near the end of the 70's or early 80's bough a NAD 3020.

Not as good or as pleasing a sound as the tube stuff, but still better than the solid state amps I had been using in the 1970s.

This is the reason I find the new fascination for 70's solid state stuff so perplexing.
From someone who was there and listened to that stuff when it was new and all the rage, and then moving on to better things,I just can't see the interest in any of it.

Sure there's lots of features and lights and bells and whistles and shiney knobs, but at the end of the day, it's the sound that comes out that counts.

But then again this hobby has verred so far off the path from where it was when I started that, trying to achieve the sonic truth has become a no no, and any gear that is not coloured and covered in a hazey cloud of electronic mist is seen as too analytic and fatiguing.

I'll take my coffee black please, just make it a premium blend.

Wow, I'm really enjoying everybody's comments, thank you. I particularly like the venomous reactions to the Phase Linear amps . . . as I think it's in so many ways the poster child of 1970s solid-state amplification.

Yet, it's earlier repuattion does not appear to have survived time. Just a question: why is that? I admit that I have not critically listened to Crown gear recently nor compared it to my current gear. Perhaps some of the oldheads out there can tell me why the old vintage Crown gear has fallen out of favor.

Bifwynne, these sorts of questions are what I had in mind to discuss when I started the thread . . . and I'd like to try as much as possible to avoid the subject of NFB, as it has a way of hijacking threads. Specifically, I think the "1970s transistor sound" is related much more to poor linearity in several key circuit areas, principally the "quasi-complementary" (all-NPN) output stage and its inescapable notch distortion.

But the Crown gear is an excellent subject, especially as it compares to Phase Linear . . . I have my suspicions that Bob Carver actually derived his designs from the Crown DC-300 schematic. They both use quasi-complementary output and driver stages, although there's a subtlety in the Crown design that's not immediately obvious: the drivers operate in Class A and in parallel with the output stage through the crossover region, smoothing out the notch distortion to a significant degree. It also makes the whole thing far less temperature sensitive for its bias conditions.

Although I don't know the exact chronology, I find it interesting that when Crown added an opamp front-end to the DC-300A (and D150) that Phase Linear followed suit by doing the same thing with the 700 Series II and 400 Series II. But Carver's amps still show the earmarks of a cheap copy, especially how he cut costs significantly by simply using an electrolytic to bootstrap the voltage-amp load, rather than the true current-source transistor powered off a separate supply rail in the Crown design. Carver was also obviously having stability issues with all these amps, as shown by the ferrite beads and picofarad-value capacitors "liberally sprinkled throughout the schematic" (to borrow an expression from Douglas Self).

All in all, from today's perspective both are dated designs and have a couple of the same flaws, but the Crown is a thoroughly well-optimized and beautifully engineered amplifier, and I think this shows in its sonics and its remarkable reliability. I'd say that with easier loudspeaker impedances, one could still do much worse than a DC-300 today.

The closest I come to your list was a B&O turntable with the non pivoting tonearm and snap in cartridge. I liked it a lot.
Aside from that was a Quad 303 preamp and a BGW500D amp that brought me lots of joy. The rest is quite foggy.
I know this is not from your list but, see what you started.

Apt amp and pre,most realistic sound 4 the buck ever !

Not trying to be argumentative. As I mentioned above, I used to own Crown gear. As I recall, it was considered SOTA in its day. I beieve it was top rated by J. Gordon Holt's Stereophile (before it accepted advertising) back in the 70s and was used to drive the most demanding power hungry hi-end speakers, e.g., Tympani panels, etc.

Yet, it's earlier repuattion does not appear to have survived time. Just a question: why is that? I admit that I have not critically listened to Crown gear recently nor compared it to my current gear. Perhaps some of the oldheads out there can tell me why the old vintage Crown gear has fallen out of favor. Maybe it was the use of copious amounts of NF to achieve spectacular performance stats??? Dunno.

Loved that old stuff. Happy Holidays!

Loved Phase Linear 400 driving ESS Towers, but my budget dictated Yamaha integrated, which I still have (upgraded by Ezekiel).

Well it was from an earlier time, but what I had in the 70s - the MAC MA 230 hybrid integrated. I remember it as being the greatest piece of gear of all time. I assume I was delusional, but I did not know any better and so it was the greatest piece of gear of all time.

I seem to remember Phase Linear amps had a reputation for catching on fire. That made an impression on my memory.

70's amplifiers were comparable to 70's clothing. Loud and obnoxious!

Good thread. Brings back memories to my Dynaco SCA 80 and then Stereo 300/ Pat 5 mated to my large Advents. Boy did that set up sound good back then.

This is slightly before the 70s, but my old man had a Fisher tube receiver, a Garrard Lab 80 turntable with an Empire cartridge, and AR speakers, and he ran that kit well into the mid 80s. Lamp cord for speaker wires, with the speakers just lying on the floor.

He was just here for Thanksgiving and couldn't repeat often enough how completely insane modern hi-fi is (which translates to "You may be 43, but you're still a schmuck), and he can't understand why anyone would want/need anything more than a Bose table top thingy.

Despite this bravura, he did take the time to listen to a Van Karajan Mozart CD all the way through three times. So how ridiculous was that, pop?

You forgot the Audio Research D150 and D75 around that time, late 70's. I ran a high end hi fi store. We had Ampzilla's (nicer sounding than the Flame Linear) and BGW's (too harsh) or the Crowns (REALLY harsh). SAE was around then too, had some cost effective stuff that competed with the Crowns and Phase Linears well. Nothing sounded better than the Audio Research in my store. I had Magnaplanars, Dahlquist DQ10s, KEF104's (my favorite of the day) and DCM Time Windows all in my high end room. An Audio Research SP3A hooked to a AR D150 amp to a KEF104 was the best we had.....Nice Micro Seiki turntable with a Grace tonearm and a Dynavector cartridge.....

While I remember it as "all good", compared to today; that stuff would be junk.

I'm still using the the Dynaco. It was a "Quad" when I used it in the 70's. I had it mated with my "Quad" Phase Linear 4000. Since that time I converted it to stereo.

Without a doubt I thought everything I had was "hot stuff" at that time. Now, I use the still powerful Dynaco in the entertainment room where nobody listens anyway, but it bangs out that bass.

I guess your question is how we remember, as opposed to how we compare with today's amps; and I remember it as "all good".

Back in the 70s, I used to own a Crown IC 150 pre and DC 300 amp. Speakers were Infinity 2000a electrostats (tweeters). TT was a Thorens TD 160 w/ Ortofon cartridge. I loved that system and had it for more years than I can remember.

The Crown gear never stopped working. I sold the IC 150 about 5 years ago. Just sold the DC 300. About 2 years ago, I bought a DC 300A for mt son. The factory rehabbed it and the amp sounds great on his system and works perfectly. His pre is an ARC SP 9 -- also immortal.

I have a D 150A II in the house as a back-up amp. One day I'll hook it up into my system to check out how it sounds compared to my ARC VS 115. I'm prepared to be surprised. :)

I had a Kenwood 8000 and something integrated amp. I think it put out 75 wpc. I used it with Rectilinear 3a speakers and the sound was excellent. I have fond memories of that system. My turntable was a Thorens TD160 with a Shure V15 cartridge.

Should have kept the system.

.
In the 70's, I was still a receiver dude. Separates were a little too esoteric for me back then. The thought of a separate amp was light years away.
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I had a Phase Linear 400 driving a pair of Bose 901 original series in 1972.

At that time it was the best amp/speaker combination I had owned.

Preamp was a Dayton Wright; don't remember the model but it was my first preamp without tone controls.

We bought a Cerwin-Vega A-1800 to power a small PA in 1977. As with some of the amps on your list this was the first generation of higher powered solid state amplification so there was little to compare. When the band split I got the amplifier. I also had a pair of Marantz 8B's at the time. I never did warm up to the Vega as a playback amp so it did duty in my DIY Bass amp rig which never left the house.

In the mid nineties I decided to go through the Vega and upgraded as many parts and wire as I could. Surprisingly, it warmed up and became fairly listenable.

A friend found the Dynaco Stereo 400 on a thrift store, rated at 200wpc into 8 ohms, 300wpc into 4 ohms. A beauty, but this one needed several fixes. Some people say its harsh and grainy.

My first excursion into the "high-end" came in 1984 when I stepped up from my Fisher X-101 with Sanyo turntable (other components?) to a McIntosh system. I purchased a used C-26, MC-2505 and new XL-10 outfit, along with a new Thorens TD-146 with Signet TK3A(?). I was so sure that McIntosh was the ultimate that I don't even recall listening to the system before bringing it home.

To make a long story short, I really tried to like it, but to my chagrin it really didn't do it for me. It seemed muddy and uninvolving. This stereo stuff wasn't as easy as I thought!

Oh well, that began my (futile?) search for the holy grail of audio!!

Some model Yamaha receivers were very good for the small amount of money they cost. A few were as low as $149.00 or $199.00 including tuner.

BGW was a great amplifier for commercial application, a southern California company that came to market about 1971 as I recall.

I sold a few to "rock and roll" stereo customers, certainly it was a superior sounding product than the Phase Linear that was more popular at that same time.

http://www.bgw.com/about/

Dave O'Brien of McIntosh clinic fame tested lots of Kenwood KA6000 and spoke highly of them. About 50 watts per channel at multiple output impedances and sturdy power supply.

Link below shows it with matching tuner of same era.
http://www.mcintoshaudio.com/images/kenwoodpair.JPG

I think my ability to afford higher end gear was transitional in that decade. My memories are limited to the early 80's and NYAL which was my first experience of the warm, lush sound of tubes, along with the Dynaco 70. What I have set in my memory of those is what I'd describe as a more romantic sound...certainly colored, a bit mushy perhaps (what a horrible adjective to apply to audio reproduction, but it's more an emotion I'm after there). I doubt I'd like them if I heard them today, but who knows. I was completely unimpressed by muscle amps like Phase Linear - they just gave me a headache. Now there were some Krells from that period, and perhaps a Levinson, that really turned my back around to seeing what SS could do right without the associated headaches.

My memories of the Dyna 120: BANG! Blew up all the time; warranty repairs drove Dynaco out of business. I remember them more from the middle 60s. I had an SAE but my Quad 303 was a better amp.

I had never liked Ampzilla, too rough sounding to me.

Phase Linear sounded dead, typical solid state sound of that age.

The one I liked most was SAE 2600. I used to own one driving a pair of Gale 401s, really sweet and dynamic sounding.

These is just my opinion of course, others will surely disagree.