The Best Amplifier Ever ?

Ed_Sawyer, I was wondering what happened to the a.c. in my caddy, care to explain yourself?

Stereophile seems a little different in it's recommended components column from what it used to be. It used to be that class 'a' was "the best sound quality attainable", at least in one area or another. And class 'b' was considered highly capable. Now it seems that anything highly capable is class 'a'. So, they need to create a new class when they get excited about something.
I have lost a little respect for the rag as a result of this. They aren't the sound quality renegades they used to be. They used to openly debate amongst themselves on how good various products were, and some whether they were good or not. Now they are just to polite, never taking a chance of offending anybody with a review or just an honest take on something if it could possibly be taken the wrong way. They used to depend on the intelligence of the reader, something I appreciated, and used for my benifit, but now I use a lot af that intelligence in guessing on how thorough some of the recommendations and reviews may be. In the past, it seemed that, as intelligent readers, we were supposed to keep in mind the taste and opinions of the reviewer, as being different, or possibly close, to ours, and we were supposed to make up our own minds, and as readers let reviewers make up thiers. Lately, It seems that pure objectivity is being shorted for preserving the possibility that a manufacturer might not be shorted or for the credibility of the reviewer being challenged or lessened in favor of limited, but safer, universal, credibility.
Go ahead and read the "how ratings are determined" section, and then check out what is in the various 'classes', and you will find too many inconsistancies to find it credible. (Evan as it was never intended to be perfect).
I still, however, really enjoy reading Stereophile, and I still find it well written. And I still find valueable info and insight from it. I especailly dig M.F.

deletions; 1961 reverberocket, due to availability (tubes), 1964 super reverb, replaced by new model (not yet reviewed), 1964 twin reverb, now too expensive for sound quality offered.

Hey, I know what your saying. I have a really old nikko, 19 watts per side, that I can not get rid of. I'll tell you the truth, and I'm not exagerrating, Its competency in reproducung bass, the complexities of it, the depth, the pinpointing, all that audiophile stuff it does. Thats with both tone controls up. Yeah, go figure. Amazing, and I know
that most of you will doubt it, but how amazing do you think engineers were in the late 60's?
This has now put the whole thing in perspective for me. If one were to find an amp, that did everything that your favorite amp did better, and that your favorite amp could not do better, in any way, in any area, then it COULD only be a matter of opinion, no matter what the opinion.
In my opinion, or IMHO, as some of you cats like to say, Stereophile mag could have come up with a better remark on their cover. If I were to say, "Audiogon is the best site ever", everybody would take that as I mean my opinion. But stereophile seems to come across as promoting the idea that they are the most accurate and knowledgeable, most trustworthy in their assessments, and that is just plain silly to see a cover like that.
To be honest, and I do mean humbly honest, I have read better, more trustworthy reviews right here on this site of late, by "reviewers" that weren't striving for much.
I hope I haven't ruined my credibility with this post, so you won't beleive me when I say, "audiogon-the best audiophile site ever!"