Has anyone truly compared Vintage vs. Modern?

FWIW, I had the SX-1250 for seven years being bought brand new in 1977 and it was paired with JBL L65 speakers which are still in daily use after refoaming/maintenance in the late 1990s. Each successive newer amp I’ve had with my L65s has struck me as better than the 1250….I’m using a 35 wpc PrimaLuna tube integrated with them presently and I think it’s the best of the bunch. Sort of still with the vintage speakers but my experience with the much-loved silver faced behemoth from the 70s has been that it’s been clearly bettered by newer gear…

They don't make them like they used to...and it's a good thing. One thing of note is that the old power transistors are not made anymore. They have been replaced with better sounding designs. NPN/PNP/JFET/MOSFET/FET all have been designed and improved over the years. Some older designs were good in their day, but time has marched on. 

I have never done an A/B comparison, but a few years ago I enjoyed using a re-capped Accuphase E-303X. When I switched to modern amps (Hegel, GATO and now Circle Labs), though, I would say that it was clear that they were better.

Sorry, this is not a direct answer… but in every decade for the last five decades amps of the same relative value have sounded significantly better than the previous decades’. So, ergo, modern better by no small margin.

One can (depends on the circuit, and more) modernize the parts in a vintage amplifier and make it sound superior to just about anything else. Parts quality can be half the battle, if not more.

But that would be called a ’ringer’, and it’s not a truly fair test.

I re-did a NAD 3120, with premium non-magnetic resistors, film and foil caps, and 3 or 4 bits of unreleased technology, more actually (eg our unreleased fuse technology, for one..)..and I keep it around to mess with people. To hook it up and feign innocence, when it is compared to a $5-10k integrated.

To sit there and say ’gosh, it’s amazing how good that old stuff is and how new stuff isn’t all it’s cracked up to be’. Or some other such stuff.

All while I’m sitting beside some poor unsuspecting person, who is listening to this NAD 3120... who’s just blown $7k on an integrated, or what not. All while the little NAD is hanging in there and literally tripping up some sonic aspects of the $7k integrated.

Oh yes, it still has the $14.99 Value Village price sticker on it. Icing on the cake.

Oh, that such fun can be had in this world.

Of course I let them in on the joke. It wouldn’t be right to let it continue..