Krell FPB 200c lack of Power?

Question for Dr. Greenman:
"The volume control is NOT a power control - it's a GAIN control."
Can you give some explanation, I'm not very familiair with this kind of technical issues. Thx in advance.

Thanks for all the great responses.Enjoy your Christmas.

Dear Xupacabras: You don't have any problem: usually the Classe amplifiers have an input sensitivity around 1V and the Krells around 2V. That's the difference: you need more volume in your preamp with the Krell.
Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

I owned a Krell fpb 200c (now upgraded to 300cx). I ran the same preamp as you... KRC3. I ran the same cables... Transparent Reference speaker and interconnects. I could barely stand to turn up the volume over 1/2 its volume range. If your Krells are in good working order they are not the problem.

Xupakabras,

Arthur [Aball ] is correct above.

The volume control is NOT a power control - it's a GAIN
control.

An amp like your Krell can both be more powerful but have
less gain than an other. As I recall, Krells have a gain
of about 25 dB. There are other, less powerful amps that
have gains over 30 dB. All this means is that you have to
put a larger signal into the Krell in order to get it to
put out the power that it is capable of.

As Arthur states - the absolute position of the volume
control is MEANINGLESS - don't worry about it.

Just crank up the control until the Krell is delivering a
reasonable volume level.

Dr. Gregory Greenman
Physicist

Sounds to me like there is nothing wrong. Volume knobs are relative, not absolute. Just crank it up! Arthur

The amp is way powerful enough. Only option is its in need of repair. I'd suggest you diagnose the problem a bit as follows. I hope you have a small multimeter. If not go to radioshack and buy one for $20.

1. Disconnect your amp from your system.
2. If you have a test CD with sine waves play it into the preamp. If not put a CD on with sustained high level music.
3. Measure the voltage (AC) with the meter across the interconnect. Do this with various preamp volume settings. With the preamp turned all the way up you should be seeing several volts on the meter. If you do you have an amp problem.
4. If you don't see several volts indication (fluctuations up to 3-4 volts) disconnect the interconnect from the preamp and read the output of the preamp directly with the meter. If it reads as predicted you have a interconnect problem.
5. If the preamp output doesn't indicate several volts with loud music you have a preamp problem.

The position of the volume control makes no difference. It's position would be the same with any Krell amp, even the 750M's. All Krells have the same sensativity.

As far as power, an X Krell employee used the FBP200 to run the bass section of his B&W800's. He told me that he got more bass output that he got from the IRS V's 1000 watt bass section.

If you like the sound, just enjoy.

Richard
PS> Krells sound best in balanced mode.

call Krell, the Krell amp just has a lower input sensitivity. Don't worry about positioning of the volume knob it has nothing to do with fidelity. If you are using Single ended cables (RCA) you could switch to Balanced which would give you more gain (and that is probably how the Krell amp was designed).

Also get a killer upgrade of a pair of dedicated circuits for that Krell to breath.

I have a FPB-200c and have previously owned and used a KRC-3 with it. The 200c is hugely powerful, it drives my ML Prodigies to tremendous volumes without any effort at all. I never needed to have my KRC-3 turned past 9 or 10, Are you sure that your balanced cables are OK? Not something silly like them being wired incorrectly or out-of phase? If not, I would call Krell and ask them for trouble shooting advice

As a Krell owner I find your situation interesting. Krell usually can belt it out with power to spare! Do you have a 20amp line and is your equipment getting enough current? Just a thought.

you might be right about incompatible components in terms of sencitivity and the output voltage between phono-- and the integrated.