Who owns / owned a First Watt F4, and what are your experiences with it ?

Nelson Pass' FirstWatt F8 does a great job driving Focal Aria 9xx and Spendor A1 speakers - from experience.

@armstrod @paullb and anyone else interested. I have owned a few rawsonte diys in the past, but never bought them from Tim himself....always 2nd or 3rd owner, some NP designs, and some chip designs. My experience with those particular amps of Tim’s, I always like, in sq, and in the builds, especially at the low cost to me. BTW, I have followed rawsonte for years, and defended him several times, against some trying to shut him down. He is not building these to make a profit, as much as break even, for his next project. I am asking to not bring this stuff up, even tho I did. Not the part of my story here....I did buy an F4 clone from Tim recently, and I have to say...in combination with my Usher P307A, I am hearing a greater amount of micro and macro dynamic shadings; a closeness and intimacy to the performances, and just more musical, acoustical and technical information from the recordings. The staging and presentation sound big, and everything is beyond the system. Everything I have listened to, except for my "Eddie Gomez" on the Denon label, leaves me with more available clockwise adjustment on the Alps pot. With the "EG", it is fully open ( and to be honest, another turn or two would have been great ). And what a quiet background. Zero, Zilch, Nothing, coming out of my Lascalas, except what is on the recordings. Having this F4 clone ( Tim did an awesome job with this one ), I could not be happier.....only time will tell. Possibly more to come. My best, MrD.

@armstrod ​​@paullb Thank you for the responses, as any 1st hand information is helpful. My best, MrD

I drive a Volvo, so I've answered the OP question as well as anyone.

I have a really nice DIY build that I use sometimes. Sounds great. Doesn’t have any of the things people don’t like about solid state (sterile, analytical, etc.). Runs warm, but not hot. Definitely needs a preamp with lots of gain and one that can also swing some voltage. When I use it with one of my preamps with 13 DB gain, I can turn the volume all the way up without using the full capacity of the amp. Pretty good damping factor and doesn’t seem to mind 4 ohm impedance loads, but if I wanted to use it all the time, I look for speakers that were at least 92 DB or so. With the right preamp and speakers, it is very, very good. I doubt there’s anything that would be significantly better in a typical room.

I owned a Rawson F4 clone and paired it with the original Zu Druids. It sounded amazing at low volumes but ran out of steam quickly as you turned it up. The 16 ohm Druids definitely cut into the power delivery, and since the F4 only increases current you need a very high gain preamp. At the time I didn't have any other speakers to try, and decided long term to keep the Druids rather than the F4.

In the right system I'm sure it's stellar.