What s the best Class A integrated tube amp over 80W

When someone compares what they get purchasing an older pair of amps like the Conrad Johnson Premier 12s or Audio Research VT-100 to todays amplifiers, it just makes sense.  Something like these amps made today would cost so much money and might not have the same high quality parts and workmanship. And, a well made and designed amp will last many many years.  Yes the VT-100 series 2 or 3 are the better ones.  Jjss49, I agree with you about the different sonic characteristics of CJ and AR.  I’ve mixed matched between them throughout the years. 

Hello Chungjh, if I were to tell you, you probably wouldn’t believe me or it.  I’m assuming because I didn’t, but learned the hard way. Spent a ton of money and got me almost there: But not to where my system was perfect.  Now I currently have 3 setups where they sound perfect to me.   What am I talking about?   Older items.  People, including myself discounted older items because in my belief, there couldn’t  be any way something older could sound better than something new-  I needed to learn.  I’ve listened to a lot of “state of the art” current products and many of them fall way short of some of the classic designs.  I have many great tube amps to recommend that are a little old but are truly killer. Do you want my advice? Been in this hobby for 30 yrs.   I’ll just leave you with 2 different sounding amps but extremely fine items. Conrad Johnson Premier Four (100 watts)
Audio Research VT-100 (100 watts). 

Hello chungjh, you are on the right track. For the money, you can’t do better than what you did. And the 6550/KT88 tube design should sound fine on Electrostats.  From my memory, the Premier 12s have a hardwired power cable. That may be the only issue limiting your options to tweak the amps.  But those amps are beautiful, powerful, and gorgeous sounding. I have a very big collection of amps going back 30yrs to current products products and I can honestly say that sometimes my vintage items outperform my more current stuff.   For my systems, I stock up on fuses so my systems are never down for long.  

Lancelock, why would you post amps that are so expensive?   I believe the majority of people that are reading here and in this discussion don’t have money like that. I looked up the David Berning 211 amps and saw they retail for $75,000. I didn’t bother looking up the 845 OTLs.  Of course there are a lot of super expensive components out there that are only for those that are wealthy. If you are fortunate to have money like that, then you’re lucky but for most people $5,000 to $10,000 is a whole lot of money to spend on an amplifier.  I think I could have easily pick a number of amplifiers that are over $50,000 and posted how good it is. Just trying to find your reasoning.

Just another thing to think about when we compare new technology to older designs.  The best things that were ever created to make music sound its best were invented very long ago,  Vacuum tubes, LPs and Reel to Reels. 

I’ve heard the VT100 a few times but never biased it so I do not know the process. But one of the tube amps I have is a Canary 301 mk 2. To bias the Canary, I need to flip the amp and remove the bottom cover. Then with a volt meter, put the probes on specific locations in order to bias each power tube. The first few times I did this convinced me to sell the amp. But I missed the Canary so  I purchased one again. Now that I’m more familiar with biasing the amp, its not an issue for me. I set the bias only once per year and that’s good enough. Canary has since made biasing procedures easier on all their amps.  I like easy biasing but sometimes you can’t have everything. Also, most of my amps are very easy to bias so if I have 1 or 2 that involve a little skill, I can live with that and it makes this hobby even more interesting.