The CJ Premiere 12 was the best vintage tube amplifier ever.

Truthfully I’ve never even seen an HK tube amp in person, so I have no opinion on the sound quality.

I’m curious if anyone has ever compared the sound of a CJ Premiere 12 to an HK citation though?

I am sure Ralph / @atmasphere is right about the measurements, but did it sound better??

@atmasphere

I was deliberately trolling you to come and chime in. :)

Best,

E

I find this hard to believe. The Harmon Kardon Citation 2 had/has wider bandwidth and lower distortion (by half). Of course it dates from 1959-1960 so is a good 30 years older, but if properly refurbished with new filter capacitors in the power supplies and good coupling capacitors it can put a lot of modern amplifiers to shame. The output transformers have bandwidth to 100KHz. It is certainly one of the better amps from the golden age of hifi. I like it more than any of the vintage Marantz amps, but of course any conversation like this is relying heavily on opinion; saying something is 'best' is always a difficult position, especially when it comes to audio!

100 %...just agree that these are really good amps. I didn't make that very clear (-:

Best (insert just about anything here) = how long is a ball of string?

I had the Premier 8A, and can concur with Erik on this. The 12’s were essentially a lower power (half the output tubes) 8A. I would think the 12’s would be at least as good or better given the speaker isn’t too power hungry. When I see this teflon upgrade, I can’t help but think don’t mess with that amp. That said, I’ve yet to hear one so there’s that. I should ad the Premiers don’t have a tight, detailed. articulate bass, but what they do well is pretty darned special.

I'm comfortable in saying that the lack of argument has proven this point absolutely true.  May the fans of 1980s and 1990s ARC amps see the error of their ways.

Eric, I do (usually) appreciate your thought provoking threads. You ended this title with a simple period, perhaps purposely and smartly so. Ending it in a couple of exclamation marks would have made it simply provoking! Seriously, the CJ would arguably be your opinion, and no one on this site like's to argue. It is probably in the top ten. 

Buy one asap SPORT!!

Erik, vintage the c-j 12 is from the 90s are we calling 90s amps vintage now?

If we are then ever means ever so you're now covering all eras, classic Marantz, esoteric stuff from the 90s like Kondo and Wavac, classic McIntosh, I mean the list goes on and on.

I doubt many would agree, I'm not a c-j fan at all, but of course you're entitled to your opinion.