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Vintage Tube Amplifiers - Any good?

Growing up in the 60s my parents had an RCA console stereo. Tremendously big, heavy and hot. To my ears at the time it sounded great. It had a 3 (4?) way speakers and could play extremely loud without distortion.

I’ve often wondered how an early 60s amp would sound with a quality source driving high end modern speakers.

Anyone ever try that?

Was thinking of doing a rehab on a vintage console and if nothing else, have a conversation piece.

Any and all thoughts appreciated.
myoungva

Showing 1 response by atmasphere

atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
12,088 posts
 

Some consoles were pretty good. Many were terrible!
But there are plenty of vintage amps that sound great on modern speakers:Harmon Kardon Citation 2, Dynaco St-70, Marantz model 8 and model 9, Fisher, HH Scott and so on. Any of them would need the power supplies rebuilt at the very least in order to be reliable.
Some console amps weren't too bad but they also would need to be rebuilt. Generally speaking the drivers in many consoles were not very wide bandwidth and didn't handle a lot of power. 
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