Stax amplifiers....experiences


I just purchased a Stax DM or DA80 amp,(its being shipped to me) I believe it was a late 70s or early 80s amp from Stax, it runs in class A 45watts. I couldnt find much about the amp on the internet, wonder if any of you have owned any of their amps or perhaps the DA80.
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i have a stax dac the so called stax talent that bought years ago. its a miniature gold anodize aluminum chassis
with a good build (nothing exceptional though)i remember the audio alchemy DDE1(i bought it later) blew it to pieces in terms of performance. i can't find stax website either.all i know is that they are from japan.
what i mean by all that is that stax is nothing much as a company in my opinion. but if you got a good deal on that amp then sure enjoy it . my two cents worth
Hi
I had the stax DA 80 with the sra 12s(preamp)for several years.
the system was the stax with ariston audio and ua7 with bw dm6.
I loved that amp.it is very natural,pure,musical,warm, with good head room,i run also the kef speaker.
as matter of fact i sold it and went for stax dm1oo(mono)and cax and still with them.
I know some one who has a da 80 since 1977 and still runing.
The fact that it gets hot is mormal(claas a)however if you
run on a sra 12 or 14s becareful du to the amp.built inside got hot,it'wise to take off the top of the peamp. so you will have no problem
I got my DA-80 from E-bay I paid $354 in non working order
after replaceing a few blown transistors on the left pre-driver board amd seting the bias the amp has now been in service for over two years now, clean pure class A sound
yes, the amp gets hot as hell put there is a plus to this,the output transistors not only does the positive part of the in coming singal but does the negative also so the transistors are always on, on a clas AB amp one transistor does the positive and one does the negative so the transistor are on only half the time, at the point where the one transistor comes on and the outher turns off is were you can get whats called crossover distortion on a class A amp this is no problum becouse the transistors are linear and thats were you get the heat.
I used a DA-80 for awhile, that belonged to the shop I worked at. It was a very good solid state amplifier, and it ran hotter than blazes! Fry an egg on top, no problem! With the age of that amp, and the heat it endured while it was on, it is very likely that capacitor replacement is needed, as well as maybe some other passive components. All Stax products were very well built, and I always liked them.