Bill Epstein Messages: 1088 Registered: May 2009 Location: Smoky Mts. USA
Illuminati (2nd Degree)
A great day! Day off, Payday and a new (22 year old) amplifier!
Adcom GFA-545 II, 100/100, samples on several sites measure above 125 watts per with 120 Volts AC Line.
So far I've played about 4 hours, mostly on the 2Pi Towers and know this will be my first keeper solid state amp since a Muse 100 in the late Eighties. More than 20 times the power of my DIY 6550 Single-Ended is a revelation: iron-fisted control of the bass which takes the bungee cord bass of the Alpha into JBL territory (only deeper) and imaging that astonished me from the first note.
There's little or no grain in the treble or else my ears are finally old enough not to hear it
The only negative is I never found myself thinking, as I often do with my tube amps, "that really sounds like a string being plucked", or some such reaction to a note or phrase. OTOH, the kick drum on "88 Basie Street" really sounds like a skin being thumped by a mallet and not just a ker-whump in the general direction of the percussion as it usually does.
Sunday I'll finally get to put the shunt resistor on the DE-250s and hear what the 4Pis sound like with the new horns. Stay tuned.
Hey, nice looking phono stage there!! So on the Adcom, better than PP tubes? What was that high powered SE amp you reviewed one time? How does it stack up against that?
Bill Epstein Messages: 1088 Registered: May 2009 Location: Smoky Mts. USA
Illuminati (2nd Degree)
SteveBrown wrote on Sat, 09 March 2013 23:29
Hey, nice looking phono stage there!! So on the Adcom, better than PP tubes? What was that high powered SE amp you reviewed one time? How does it stack up against that?
Eunice Kron's Kronzilla has nothing to fear from Adcom! If I wasn't on the IPad I'd post the pic I have of you holding that Geye-normous tube
The 545 really is good, tho', especially for the $175 I paid, shipped. I almost bought a Class D amp kit for $50 bucks more but, like that Buick ad, "wouldn't you really rather have class A/B?"
nice amp! I got a new 535 (60wpc version) from the same series about 20 yrs ago, and used it until I got SET bug a few years later. I kept it to break in speaker drivers until my son took it away and he still uses it with the Pi2's we built together. When I used the Adcom with the Pi4s, my house had a real nice club sound.
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