If memory serves, they sounded soft and lazy.
The 'Pipe and slippers' reputation of Quad amplifiers was just like Naim's reputation for PRAT, total nonsense. Quad's amplifiers going back to the 303 had sufficiently low output impedance as not to matter, and as for 'dynamic headroom' the answer to that is don't clip the amplifier! If you're getting close to clipping, where dynamic headroom matters, you need a bigger amp!
I was just guessing, never measured one.
Yet there have been no ASR type measurements of them that I could find.
I've measured both Quad and Meridian amplifiers, albeit with conventional analogue equipment, not Audio Precision. Both the Quads and Meridians had some limitations of current delivery although both were capable of driving 4 ohms, but not much below that. The Meridian 103 circuit was used in Meridian's active 'speakers driving 4 ohms, but as they were driving the voice coils directly, not through a passive crossover, the impedance seen by the amps was close to 4 ohms resistive. I recall Saras dropped below 4 ohms so neither Quads nor Meridians would be ideal. Naim amps had better current delivery, in part because they didn't have much in the way of overcurrent protection (or unconditional stability). Hence the importance of operating amplifiers within their design capabilities.
And people should be aware that "flippers" buy broken vintage stuff, and "repair" it just enough to sell. Often the item is complete shambles, with improper parts and terrible workmanship.Whoever had worked on them did not used equivalent replacement parts. They had also put inferior driver transistors in there.
Many gravitate to vintage, however for me the takeaway from this review is not that the reconstructed amp performs well, but rather anything this old will likely come with problems. The questionable part of the equation is: 1) If you can't fix it yourself, who are you going to get who can, and is willing repair it to spec; 2) are equivalent replacement parts available; 3) if those criteria are satisfied, how much is it going to cost to bring it up to spec?
Folks with the knowledge, ability, and willingness to refurbish these items are becoming scarcer, each day, it seems. If you can find someone, you're certainly ahead of the game. In my experience, consider spending about as much as you bought the item for used, for repairs.
When buying the on-line marketplace, beware of becoming seduced by anything listed as 'rare'. In most cases it's not rare, and if it is, you probably don't want it, because there's a reason it's rare.
My conclusion is that some people are very susceptible to nostalgia.
Yes - there's a huge secondary market in vintage things - cars especially, guitars, hi-fi - based entirely on boomers finally getting prosperous enough to chase the stuff they desperately wanted as young people. Some lusts never die.
They look cool.
Passive crossovers can be a handful, but one would hope an experienced designer would deal with glaring problems. But here we sit criticizing, while Wilson is coining money. C'est la vie.
Yes and they can claim that their speaker is so revealing and resolved that only beefy krell monoblocks would do
" no sh*t sherlock"
It's a feature, not a flaw. Such decisions are far cheaper than engineering.Yes and they can claim that their speaker is so revealing and resolved that only beefy krell monoblocks would do
I also service music equipment. Vintage guitar amps and synthesizers etc. IMO, that's a bit different. Old tube amps have a certain flavor of distortion that sounds good for guitar. The prices are getting atsronomical but people are still paying it.
I was right with you until the FM part. FM is near dead except for car radios.
