Carver TFM-xx Amplifiers

[Sal1950]

My Flame Linear 700B and a 1000 DR Expander-Noise Reduction box on the shelf.
Nice gear in it's day ca 1982
I really miss the days of nice wood cabinetry for HiFi components.
Only my Mitsu tuner was naked.

 

[Panelhead]

The king of that pile is the DA-F20. That was a great unit. Under appreciated. I had one, sold about 10 years ago. Still worked fine.

 

[Blumlein 88]

 

[Sal1950]

The king of that pile is the DA-F20. That was a great unit. Under appreciated. I had one, sold about 10 years ago. Still worked fine.

I loved that tuner, hated to sell it but just didn't have a use for it anymore. Like you I sold mine right around 10 years ago when I retired and moved.

 

[Speedskater]

The Carver Site forum repair page:
https://thecarversite.com/forum/128-amp-repair/

 

[Sal1950]

The Carver Site forum repair page:
https://thecarversite.com/forum/128-amp-repair/

The link is broken.

 

[cknepper1]

I will throw in my two cents. Bob Carver is a talented engineer. His Magnetic Field Amplifiers were nothing magical, they just used multiple rail voltages to reduce consumption and heat. They are called Class G. They always sounded fine to me, and with the exception of the M400 cube have been reliable. There is company, Nelion Audio, LLC, that performs rebuilds (new caps and any needed repairs) and upgrades to increase their reliability and power for reasonable prices.

The Sunfire amps were great. While the tracking downconverter is a neat design, others use them now (Class H). Emotiva uses such a design in their Differential Reference amplifiers. I acquired a used Sunfire Stereo for $700 nearly 20 years ago to use temporarily while having an Adcom 5500 upgraded by Stan Warren (the other half of PS Audio). The Adcom came back, was hooked up, pulled back out and the Sunfire stayed. More power, better sounding (in my flawed sighted testing, but I will say I expected the Adcom to sound better, many will say I didn't let the Adcom break in long enough since I only gave it a few hours), cooler, and had the cool, but useless, Joule storage gauge. Last year I spent about $400 to have Bill Flanery recap the Sunfire and continue to use it as my amplifier for my Magnepans.

Bob is also good about supporting prior products. When Sunfire went away, he set Bill Flannery up with all the information so he could have his own shop doing repairs. He did so previously with another company when Carver went under (long after he left).

Thanks for the feedback. I have seriously considered buying an older Adcom amplifier because I remember them sounding very good back in the 90s but I often wondered how they would compare in sound to the Carver designed amps. The Adcoms being the classic huge and heavy box of amplifier vs. Carver's slim cool box of amplifier.

I haven't ever had the opportunity to listen to them side by side though.

 

[Bald1]

Never have owned a Carver amp. But like Digital Mastering System I love and still use my TX-11a tuner. Sadly the one local station that broadcast AM-Stereo decided when their equipment failed to stay with plain mono. The AM Stereo was remarkable on this tuner.

I also own a Phase Linear 3000 Series Two preamp. Ran it for almost 2 decades and it is now in storage still fully functional although with a replacement volume pot and knob. Friends at the time were rather shocked that I opted to buy it over the Apt-Holman unit after extensive audition of both. Never regretted my choice.

 

[cknepper1]

I have never heard an A.M. stereo broadcast. I’m curious now that you mention it. .

 

[Bald1]

I have never heard an A.M. stereo broadcast. I’m curious now that you mention it. .

This site gives some good info and history: http://www.amstereo.org/

 

[anmpr1]

I have never heard an A.M. stereo broadcast. I’m curious now that you mention it. .

AM Stereo was sort of like Dolby FM. An idea. Whether it was a good idea is almost less than debatable. By the time of its inception, musical content on AM had mostly migrated to FM, where you didn't have all the atmospheric interference problems (or at least as much). Soon AM was the home of political oriented talk radio. And religious content. Sermons and so forth. You didn't need stereo for that. Then there was the expense of a new tuner inorder to receive the signal.

I owned FM tuners and at times enjoyed them, but we were lucky to have two college stations playing interesting music, not to mention the generic NPR thing (which was occasionally listenable, music-wise). For cash-cow reasons, the latter ditched classical music for their brand of news and 'lifestyle' programming. If you were not pretty close to the transmitter the low powered college stations didn't come in well in stereo--at least without an outside antenna. Really, an outside antenna is mandatory for good FM. So that was/is an added expense. Today, because there's probably no good FM in most areas anymore, what's the point?

To me, an FM tuner is sort of like an open reel deck as far as usefulness goes. But a lot cheaper to own/operate. Just not as cool to look at on your shelf.

 

[Sal1950]

Reminds me of the simulcast days. All kinds of stuff was being done in the day, FM stereo by broadcast on two stations at once. TV stereo using a FM stereo station. There was even some early quad broadcasting done using two FM stations at once.. Kids today would be amazed.
What we wouldn't go thru to escape mono. LOL

 

[anmpr1]

Reminds me of the simulcast days. All kinds of stuff was being done in the day, FM stereo by broadcast on two stations at once. TV stereo using a FM stereo station. There was even some early quad broadcasting done using two FM stations at once.. Kids today would be amazed. What we wouldn't go thru to escape mono. LOL

AM began (at least as I remember it) playing Top 40, R&B, or C&W 45s. Those were all mono. The late '60s and early '70s began FM 'album oriented' stations. NPR broadcast classical, but when they migrated to 'lifestyle' you didn't need stereo for the Tappet Brothers. Maybe Click was on the left channel, and Clack owned the right.

Streaming (and satellite) pretty much killed music FM. Just like TV killed the great sports announcers. When I was a kid I'd listen to basketball games on AM transistor radio. I didn't even know anything about basketball, but the announcers from the 'clear channel' station were so good you could visualize the fast Celtic action in your head. (We lived in Wyoming but received WLS Chicago at night.)

I recall driving out of Louisiana one evening--an FM station was broadcasting a live Grateful Dead concert. This was probably 1974 or so. What a treat, at least for the hour or so as I was in the signal area. Now the band has their own satellite channel. LOL

The days of high end '60s Marantz/McIntosh, the excellent top tier Japanese products, and the crazy over the top Sequerra are long gone. And those Asymmetrical Charge Coupled Detected days probably aren't coming back.

As an aside, a company called McKay-Dymek marketed a 'hi-fi' AM tuner. I read a couple of test reports in the magazines but never saw one in real life. My impression at the time was that it was the answer to a question no one was asking.

 

[Sal1950]

The days of high end '60s Marantz/McIntosh, the excellent top tier Japanese products, and the crazy over the top Sequerra are long gone.

I remember how excited I was when I first got my Mitsu DA-F20 tuner. One of the first "affordable" tuners with a digital station readout, but they included a analog dial for the old fashion guys. LOL. It was a great piece and I hated to sell it but I had no use for it anymore, my multich gear was now including FM digital.

 

[anmpr1]

I remember how excited I was when I first got my Mitsu DA-F20 tuner. One of the first "affordable" tuners with a digital station readout, but they included a analog dial for the old fashion guys.

I too had a 'digital' readout with analog dial tuner. Bought it at a pawn shop for a handful of dollars. I didn't get the matching amp since I already had a closet full of amplifiers. LOL

I kept the Sansui for a year or so. Then realized it was essentially worthless to me. Nothing worth listening to over the air. Sold it for several times what I bought it for. Beautiful as these things go.

 

[Wes]

The Audio Cryptic found that a car tuner was superior to most home units - I forget the issue tho.

also:

https://www.fmtunerinfo.com/

Public radio has good quality FM broadcasts

 

[Unclevanya]

My Flame Linear 700B and a 1000 DR Expander-Noise Reduction box on the shelf.
Nice gear in it's day ca 1982
I really miss the days of nice wood cabinetry for HiFi components.
Only my Mitsu tuner was naked.
View attachment 60108

That's an AR-XA turntable right? I had a heavily modified one of my own back in the day. I used cast off Linn springs and spare bits of Linn armboard material, I spliced on the armboard where the aluminum frame held the original arm (long gone by the time I got the unit for peanuts). A Sumiko MMT and a Supex 900 cartridge completed the package.

As for AM - when I was a kid I had an old 1960's caddy with an AM only dash unit. The reception on that radio was crazy. I could pick up clear channel stations like WLS Chicago that I couldn't pick up in my house with a dedicated tuner. That radio had a single 5x7'ish mono speaker in the dash and the sound was seriously poor (no high end) but WLS played rock and roll that was fun to listen to and there were few music station options on AM even back then (before man invented fire - LOL).

 

[Sal1950]

That's an AR-XA turntable right? I had a heavily modified one of my own back in the day. I used cast off Linn springs and spare bits of Linn armboard material, I spliced on the armboard where the aluminum frame held the original arm (long gone by the time I got the unit for peanuts). A Sumiko MMT and a Supex 900 cartridge completed the package.

As for AM - when I was a kid I had an old 1960's caddy with an AM only dash unit. The reception on that radio was crazy. I could pick up clear channel stations like WLS Chicago that I couldn't pick up in my house with a dedicated tuner. That radio had a single 5x7'ish mono speaker in the dash and the sound was seriously poor (no high end) but WLS played rock and roll that was fun to listen to and there were few music station options on AM even back then (before man invented fire - LOL).

The TT is a AR-XB, just a slightly later model. I also played with mod'ing it for a different arm, etc, that was the thing to do in the day. Later traded it off for a new HK ST8 with it's Rabco arm and such, a great table.
My home town was Chicago and grew up listening to WLS with Dick Dick Biondi, The good part of that was during my military years and thru other travels, at night I could always tune in to home with WLS radio in my car. Can't tell you how many nights I sat in my car outside my baracks listening to that 50,000 watt clear channel station.

 

[Sandthemall]

I've owned a Carver TFM 15CB. It was my first hi-fi amp. I ran a CD player directly into it using the gain knobs as volume controls. It sounded clean but when I finally put a decent preamp in front of it many years later, it was a completely different amp. Very smooth upper end and more 'meaty' sounding overall.

In 2008, I saw an eBay add for a TFM-35. This is the 250 wpc version of this amp. The ad had no pictures of the amp...just the box. It was sealed. The price was $450 for a new, sealed product. This was at a time when the same used product with pictures were going for $600+. So I took a risk.

Yup completely NOS. It sounded great too. Same amazing upper end smoothness 'to die for'.

By this time I had a Don Sachs model 2 preamp. When run with that preamp, it was amazing. Smooth, upper end just like a tube amp. I next bought a Don Sachs Kootenay KT88 amp. Which arrived damaged but played nicely. When I alternated between that and the TFM-35, I realized that the Carver held its own against the Kootenay. The TFM-35 upper end detail is every bit as sexy as the Kootenay. The Kootenay had a slight edge in the midband.
But it was so very close. So I returned the Kootenay because of the damage.

The TFM-35 upper end detail forced me return my Primaluna Dialogue Premium. I got an EVO 400. The TFM-35 beat that in upper end detail by a smidge, but lost to the EVO's midrange, mid-bass and general fun factor.

The TFM-35 is by no means perfect but it's a good benchmark mark amp for upper end smoothness.

Lots of people simply don't know how good these things are out of the box.

Lot's of Nichicon caps and Toshiba transistors. Made in Japan. Will drive anything. Stable to 2 Ohms and they run cool.

The 'numbers' and specs seem completely unspectacular but it delivers, 'in one word', a very 'smooth' sound.

Take it to the right place for service and you'll love them.

 

[sarumbear]

Anyone who proudly writes such ridiculous text on his website and gets away with it gets a salute from me. You have to congratulate the man. He knows how to con.

Bob’s Amazing Line Source breaks the mold of any previous design.

A true line source speaker is simply a speaker so tall and acoustically long that we, the listener, hear a speaker that goes all the way to infinity. Up to infinity and down to infinity, resulting in what a scientist would call a "perfect wave launch."

The wave from such a speaker behaves as if it emanates from a gossamer-thin filament running from below the center of the earth to beyond the moon: A pure, beautiful, cylindrical sound wave. When we listen to such a wave, we find that we can hear musical nuances that we often cannot hear at all using normal speakers.