Big Krells Have Vanished From The Used Market

most keep them because they WORK well ! 

cap8 posts04-25-2017 6:14ammost keep them because they WORK well !

+1 on that cap.

If you go back a couple of years there were a glut of them on the used market, people started ditching them with the promise" of Class-D potentially turning them boat anchors, and vision of loosing a fist full of dollars, how quickly that turned around.
Now they are never seen on the used market and in there place come many of the high end Class-d’s being advertised used, and it’s no wonder once you’ve A/B them.
Every forum classifieds section seems to have a Devialet Class-d or something similar for sale.

Cheers George

georgehifi,

You can be relied upon as a good class D denier. You seem to post on any thread even mentioning class D. What’s the deal? Do you have a hidden agenda?
I think you’re doing a disservice to the many owners of hard to drive spkrs who drive them with very large, heavy, powerful, inefficient, hot running but great sounding amps like the big Krells.
All I’m suggesting is that anyone using one or more tube, class A or class A/B traditional linear amps should at least take a listen to one or more good quality class D amps in their system and decide for themselves. Many class D sellers offer free or low cost in-home trial periods on their amps knowing how few are actually returned to them.
This is what I did a few years ago to replace a large class A/B Aragon amp to drive my inefficient large panel Magnepans and I’m glad I gave class D a listen. I was very surprised to discover they outperformed my old amp in every area most of us care about; extremely quiet, highly detailed, life-like dynamics on source content that still has it, powerful well damped solid bass with a neutral mid-range and treble response that is only as sweet as the music source and upstream components allow.
Good class D amps also have non-sonic benefits: relatively affordable,small, light, efficient, reliable and mine never get hotter than luke-warm no matter how hard they’re driven.
I am not associated with producing, selling or in any other way associated with class D amps in any manner other than owning 2 very good stereo and a pair of mono-block examples of them. I’m just a big fan now and believe others are best served by hearing from a user who has no bias, agenda or stakes involved in this matter.

Thanks,
Tim

Big watts are unreliable due to heat. A friend used to own the larger FPBs and the amps showed leakage with the capacitors or some other components. The cost of maintenance may be high. Personally, I would not go higher than 200W for Class AB solid state amps. For higher power requirements perhaps look at some of the Class D options. Alternatively explore more efficient speakers.

"Big watts are unreliable due to heat."

Disagree. If properly and conservatively designed, hot running (class A) amps are very reliable.

Case in point, my Threshold SA6e’s from the early 90s are still running strong with never a fault. At 25 years of use, I replaced the power supply caps and rectifiers (both easily available from Mouser/DigiKey) as preventative measures.  And still going strong.