Parasound Halo JC-1 -VS- Bryston 7B-ST?

Braro, I think one of my JC1's had something similarly wrong; however, mine just stuck on red. That said, the amps played fine, but my nervosa got the better of me and I sent it back to Parasound to fix. It was a simple voltage clamp that was undersized...they charged me nothing except return shipping and I had it back in less than 10 days. I would say from my experience that the customer service was outstanding...and I'm the 2nd owner.

On the subject of this thread, unfortunately I have never heard a Bryston amp so can't offer any insight there. I have heard the Magnepan MG3.6's driven by both the JC1's, the Pass X600, and the McCormack DNA2 with Rev A mods. In my opinion, the X-600 was a large step down from either the JC1's or the McCormack...I really did not like the sound of the X-600...veiled, thin, and despite the power rating, it sounded less powerful (keep in mind these are relative statements and may not apply in a totally different system). The McCormack and JC1's were much closer, though of a different flavor. The JC1's are extraordinarily transparent and I feel extended on the highs. The McCormack was a little better in the low frequency weight (not by alot), had a slightly better "bloom" in the midrange, but also sounded darker or more closed in on the top. Both are fantastic amps...I preferred the JC1's in my system.

I have had simply OUTSTANDING customer service on a used Parasound JC-1 power amp that I purchased here on Audiogon.
I accidently blew it up the first time by dropping the end of an interconnect that was hooked to my CD player onto one of the speaker cable ends.
I had to pay for this repair, of course, [no warranty].
Well, about a month later the amp was playing at a normal volume level and just "blew up" again???
This time I sent it to Parasound again.
They fixed it, and even sent me another replacement driver board all for FREE!
They even paid the return shipping!
I have had no further problems at all with either of these amps and its going on 9 months now.
All the folks there treated me with the utmost respect and kindness, including Richard and Tony.
I wish more companies were as outstanding at customer service as Parasound and Pass Labs!
I would have No Hesitation at all in using their customer service dept, or in purchasing a new product from either of them.
Again, great job Parasound and thanks.
Just my 2 cents.
Lanny

I called Parasound and I AM an idiot!

Normally I don't like contributing to these types of exchanges but I am from the restaurant industry and you know the old motto: do something good for someone and they'll tell two people. Do something bad and they'll tell two hundred.

I don't know the gent who felt compelled to pass along second-hand victriolic comments about Parasound and I am sure that there are people out there who've had bad experiences with Parasound or with their bank or with an IRS audit. Yet it says something that many are responding with good things about Parasound and I am one of them. Here is MY story and (to repeat) I am an idiot in this case and no one at Parasound pointed out this obvious fact:

Up until recently I had a pair of the great (no matter what the snobs might say) JC-1s. On two seprate occasions I called tech support to find out if I had the latest versions, if I could get upgrades, if I could have them inspected, etc., etc. You know these calls: I was wasting the tech's time. Yet the person at the other end (whose name I can't remember, unfortunately) was patient, polite and very knowledgable. For kicks I sent Richard Shram an Email and the poor guy answered back in detail at 11 PM the next night. We exchanged a few more Emails and I let the poor man be.

A while back I was moving amps around and moved a delay switch on one of the amps. When I couldn't get the amp to fire up I panicked and dialed Halo-911. It took the tech but two minutes to diagnose the problem (since his first question was "Have you recently moved the amps?"). He stayed on the line while I made sure everything is OK and we even chatted a bit about the (apparently now cancelled) JC-2 preamp and other things.

Prior to the Halos, I had the baby Halo setup: P3/T3/A23. I sold the P3 on Audiogon and for some reason the buyer received the preamp DOA. He returned it to me and I sent it to Parasound. Three days later I had a new P3. I called to find out why they hadn't just repaired my original one and the tech said "hey, don't worry about it. We'll get to yours. We gave you a new one so you wouldn't be without a component." Was that the truth? Was he reading from a script while Richard Shram had his finger on the button connected to electrodes attached to the tech's body? Who knows, who cares. THEY FREAKIN' SENT ME A BRAND NEW PREAMP!!!!!

And I have similar great (but not a manganemous) stories about my dealings with Pass Labs, Magnum Dynalab and Martin Logan.

My point is this: more often than not you get back what you put out in the universe. It takes A LOT to get a company executive and/or employee to call a customer "idiot" unless, of course, said customer is exhibiting all the classical symptoms of being a total a**hole. I know this from experience when I've baited people to see how much crap they'll take from me before they show me the door.

All of us have horror stories. Mine concerns Sound Lab. I have a story that will make the hair on your heads stand on end, and not because of the sonic bliss of their speakers. But if I were to post it I bet I'd have a hundred rebuttals. Of course, if I didn't that would be very telling.

Sure, it's a public forum and we can all say what we want but maybe we should stop to first think about the implications. Getting on these forums and saying "my friend's third cousin called Unlimited Extreme Super Audio Technologies to complain about something and the next night people showed up at his house, very bad people" doesn't really benefit anyone but it sure gets the blood boilin' I'll lell you what ....

Daltonlanny's comment is particularly apropos, in that accidents do occur, and that crossing speaker terminals accidently is very easy to do: plastic terminal caps that are only hand tightened, jumpers that come loose from bass vibration,et. But shouldn't these high end amps be able to shut down before circuit damage is done? My Yamaha RX-Z1 Home theater amp has had it's terminals crossed by me many many times due to the weight and quantity of speaker cables. The amp simply shuts down and a mesage appears on the screen "check speaker cables". The same with my McIntosh mc501's.It is virtually impossible to fry them. I had and still have some of the older Parasound amps, and if an event occurred, surge, terminals crossed, etc. the worst that would happen is I would simply blow a fuse. I never blew a circuit.I am not an electrical engineer but it seems with today's technology that protecting circuits should not be that difficult. I don't know.

Ruka, I think you are partially right. There are many run of the mill amps out there that don't get damaged from crossed terminals. They just shut down. Turn 'em on, they work fine. High power amps have more current movin' thru, so more potential for damage. That said, if an amp is properly designed it should be protected against self destruction. A good designer should know how to design the protection circuits to prevent this. I knew several tech guys who played around with amp modding and designs. One of their pet peeves was high style designers who thought they knew it all but these guys would show me the weaknesses in their designs. Couple years ago I borrowed some JC amps from an audio friend. I thought the toggle switches were cheesy as were the binding posts. They sounded good, but they had some veiling and grain. Yeah,I know all the talk about thousands of hours of burn in, but this guy had them on playing music like 24-7, so they had lots of hours already. After borrowing them, i didn't think they lived up to the hype. One day he called me to tell me one blew up. I looked at it, and there was burned up stuff on the boards. He said it just happened while they were on playin' tunes. I had wished my techie friends were around to take a peak, but they all moved and I moved....