Obscure brands worth considering

I buy from well established companies that will stay in business for a while and provide great support.

That has worked for me in every respect except with amplifiers.  Clayton Audio is a USA-based company but really a one-man operation that handles requests but no longer seems to be in full scale production these days.

On the positive side, Wilson Shen is a great guy to work with and a very talented designer.  After selling to go with well-regarded Class D amps, I ended up going back to Clayton amps and commissioning Wilson to rebuild/upgrade the amps I was able to find and purchase.  The guy who purchased my original Claytons remains very happy with them.  Before finding another pair of Claytons, I tried a number of well-reviewed amplifiers but none that sounded so much like real music to me.

So what is his secret?

I cannot claim to know, but I can say his amps seem to be built very well, to maybe overbuilt, with huge power supplies, and they run in all class  A. The parts are of a high quality and more about service life than being boutique parts to help sell the amplifiers.  The features are also well thought-out including, the top mounted heat sinks to help dissipate heat, WBT binding posts, cleverly located and high quality power and bias switches, and light on the back panel that helps owners remember the amplifier is powered up when they are making cable changes.