Ohm Model F - What amp/receiver should I get?

Crownamp-

You have F's? Congratulations.

What I know is a bit limited, and I'm going to try and not make a fool of myself by acting like an expert. But I can confidently tell you a couple of things.

First- I personally know of no receiver that can handle the F's. Your Ohms need quite a bit of quality power- right around 250 watts RMS. Your best bet is a good amplifier- there are plenty available here on Audiogon. However, the F's are tricky, and too much power can also cause problems if you over-drive them.

The second thing I can tell you is to prepare to answer a lot of questions about yout F's. Any idea what year they were made? Are they original drivers? What condition are they in?

That's it for now. With any luck, a few more experienced A'goners like Mapman will chime in. Be sure to read the entire thread: "Micro Walsh Talls- whose actually heard 'em" that was started by Rebbi. There is a lot of information on all things Ohm, including amps, pre-amps and most of the things you are wondering about.

Have fun, and be patient!

-P

I find myself asking a lot of questions already, like what goes into what? my dad has a few crowns, amps and preamps, DC300A, IC 150, D 150A, D 150A Series 2, etc

Message Mapman. He knows a lot about Ohm speakers. And do look at that other Ohm thread. Lots of good info there!

I worked in a stereo store in 1975-6 that carried both Crown and Ohm F's. We had the F's hooked up in our little "high end room," along with Dahlquist DQ10s, ESS AMT 1b's, and a couple of other things. For electronics we carried Phase Linear, Accuphase, USA-made Marantz Pro, and Crown. The Crown DC300A is a fairly good match in that it is high current for its power output (150 wpc into 8 ohms) and very stable into any load. However, we found that the Ohms came alive even more powered by the Phase Linear 700, which is 350 wpc into 8 ohms. In other words, the Ohm F can be a real power hog, but I suspect if your dad was happy with the DC-300A (which was one of my favorite amps at the time), you probably will be too. And we just used 16 ga. lamp cord for speaker cable back then. The same rig will sound much better with today's purpose-built speaker cables.

Parasound63 is also right that there's no receiver I can think of either that would be suitable to drive the Ohm Fs.

As for hooking it up, Crown has free pdf downloads of their discontinued products here. For the IC-150 preamp, click the Line Level link. For the D-150, D-150A, D 150A Series 2, and DC-300A amplifiers, click the Amplifiers link. The D 150 series produces 75 watts per channel into 8 ohms; the DC-300A has double that power.

For example, the IC-150 is a pre-amp. It is the control and switching center for the various stereo components (turntable, tuner, tape machine, CD player, etc.) and has at least one built-in phono preamp stage. You'd plug a magnetic cartridge turntable into Phono 1 and could use the other inputs (e.g., tuner and Aux1 and Aux2 to plug in an FM tuner, CD player, and other source components. Only use the Phono input(s) to plug in a turntable. Then connect (using RCA plug interconnects) the IC-150 preamp to the DC-300A amplifier. You connect the Main Output #1 left and right outputs to the inputs of the DC-300A. Then connect speaker cable from the DC-300A to the pair of Ohm F's. Make sure you keep the positive and negative runs of speaker cable consistent with the positive and negative speaker wire terminals, both on the DC-300A and the Ohm F's.

Download those manuals from Crown and read up on them before connecting or turning on anything. Make sure the volume on the IC-150 is all the way down the first time you turn it on to play music through it. Then bring the volume up gradually until you get to a comfortable listening volume.