I used to own one, about 8 years ago. It was my first tube power amp. It was easy enough to bias, utilitarian in appearance and sounded pretty good driving my Alon IIs.
I later replaced it with a Sunfire amp to try to get more bottom end control of the Alons. Although I'm not a ss, this was an improvement in terms of tighter, more tuneful bass & more apparent speed on highs.
Since then I've had 3 other tube amps, all of which I preferred to the VTL. Main complaint was lack of transparency & detail compared to others. Tonality was on the warm side of reality, (not necessarily a bad thing) but to too much of a degree.
FYI, rest of the system at the time was: Sonic Frontiers SFL-1 Sig. preamp, Proceed PDT/PDP3 trans/processor, Acarian Black Orpheus Triwire, AQ inter. YMMV
Spencer
I later replaced it with a Sunfire amp to try to get more bottom end control of the Alons. Although I'm not a ss, this was an improvement in terms of tighter, more tuneful bass & more apparent speed on highs.
Since then I've had 3 other tube amps, all of which I preferred to the VTL. Main complaint was lack of transparency & detail compared to others. Tonality was on the warm side of reality, (not necessarily a bad thing) but to too much of a degree.
FYI, rest of the system at the time was: Sonic Frontiers SFL-1 Sig. preamp, Proceed PDT/PDP3 trans/processor, Acarian Black Orpheus Triwire, AQ inter. YMMV
Spencer