Perreaux amplifier 3150B - your opinion sought

This specific Perreaux amp is very warm and full sounding with great bass "thump". Some would say that the amp lacks air and spaciousness and i would probably tend to agree as a general rule. If you like a warm and romantic sound with great bass attack, it would be right up your alley. It is also capable of pumping enough juice to drive just about any load that you throw at it.

I have tried quite a few different combo's with this amp in terms of speakers and speaker cables and the sound has remained consistent 98% of the time. I found that the YBA Diamond speaker cables actually did alter sonics i.e. opened the top end up but caused an overall lean sound. I would think that Nordost's might have a similar effect although i never ran them with this amp for some reason.

Given the above info, i use two of these amps to power multiple low impedance subwoofers in one system. They are great for bottom end impact and slam. Just keep in mind that they run QUITE hot and will need quite a bit of open space around them if you want to avoid cooking them to death.

As far as pricing goes, that may be a tad high but not by a whole bunch. Obviously, prices will vary with physical / electrical condition and you have to take that into account.

Here are some other points that you should be aware of. The binding posts on this amp are 100% bare metal. On top of that, the rail voltage on this amp are capable of swinging 180 volts peak to peak out of those binding posts at a very high level of current. As such, it has the potential to kill you or do major damage if the cables or speakers short out. If the output terminals were accidently shorted, the amp would probably be terminally wounded. Peter Perreaux basically believed in building amps like tanks and avoiding all but the most essential protection circuitry. As such, the output devices would probably be cooked and they are no longer available. In effect, this would leave you with a nice chassis and transformer and no source for amplification. Sean
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Rwd: Sorry for the phenomenally slow response. As you might have noticed, i've not been on the puter as much lately.

As to my "deathly" comments, you would have to be doing something really dumb to have an amp "cook" you via the binding posts. None the less, many high quality amps of good power are capable of doing what i mentioned IF you somehow managed to put yourself in such a position. The 3150 may offer slightly more potential to do so since it runs very high rail voltages (+/- 90 volts ) and makes use of bare metal binding posts. For the record, most amps run the rails somewhere in the 40 - 70 volt range.

Motorpsychos: Personally, i think that the 3150 & 2150 sound noticeably different from one another. It is hard to believe that they came from the same manufacturer let alone make use of 90% of the same parts. The 2150 is noticeably brighter / edgier sounding to me in the mids and upper range and lacks the bottom end "oomph" that i find the 3150 to normally display. Having said that, some might prefer the more forward and leaner sound of the 2150 than that of the warmer / more "potent" bottom end of the 3150. Obviously, this would boil down to system synergy and personal preference. Sean
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Hi Frank. I too remembered the 2150's as having excellent bottom end "way back when". The first time i heard the amp, the first words out of the owner of the shop's mouth were "listen to the bottom end on this baby", etc... After comparing a few 2150's to a couple of 3150's in a side by side, there is NO comparison when it comes to bottom end impact and slam.

As far as the 1150 goes, i think that it sounded a little smoother than the 2150 but was a little lacking in terms of dynamic punch. This was probably due to the reduced amount of available power.

In terms of the availability of output devices, these amps use the same outputs as MANY amps i.e. B&K's, Muse, etc... to name a few. While there are some substitutes available, i don't know how well that they work. I have heard of some "heavy duty" versions that are basically a "double stamping" ( twice the amount of junctions within one casing), but i don't know much of a "drop-in" they would be. It should make for a very rugged device but as far as sonics go, who knows ???

As far as sticking with "reputable brands" i.e. long term servicability, i agree with what you are saying but also know that a manufacturer has no control over what is / isn't available on the market place. Don't you think that every manufacturer would like to produce a product that they could stand behind "forever" in terms of reputation ?

I know of a major manufacturer that built a product based around a specific Integrated Circuit, sold thousands of that product and when it came time to re-order, the manufacturer of that IC stated that it was no longer available and there was no substitute. What does a single manufacturer do in such a situation ???

While you would think that Hitachi, Toshiba, Motorola, Sanken, etc... would recognize the captive market that they have for some of these "unavailable" products and do a small production run every now and then, i guess that they have got bigger fish to fry. It's a shame too, as a lot of good products end up in the boneyard simply because we can't get the parts for them. Sean
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