How does the Phase Linear 400 compare?

Hey, at the very least my Phase 400 and 700B had a personality. The faceplates and design aesthetics were typical of the 1970s wonderful creativity. The sound was not bad if you needed gobs of power. The amps were better than the 4000 Preamp. I still look upon the products of the 70s with fondness. The stuff was interesting and mostly all of it was obtainable. This was a time when you could truly call it a HOBBY. Today, well I dont think so........Frank

Chiming in a decade late but with the internet everything's permanent, right? Around the time the PL came out there was a growing high end consensus that very high power was a good thing. There are technical arguments in favor of this. Carver's amp was the first one to offer that kind of power and did so at a cost that some hobbiest types - as opposed to rich sybarites - could afford. In blindfold listening tests the PL400 scored very high, pitted against some fancy name competition. Given Bob Carver's track record of churning out innovative designs one after another there's at least an outside chance that the guy is a good engineer, and that his amp was as good or better than the competition - in fact there wasn't any before his amp caught on. A lot of the negative stuff I read about Phase Linear and Carver is written by people who seem to be haters or hucksters rather than objective and nuanced thinkers.

Given Bob Carver’s track record of churning out innovative designs one after another there’s at least an outside chance that the guy is a good engineer

I am in the middle of a Phase Linear 400 rebuild and saw this post, decided to chime in. I am a fan of Bob Carver designs myself - from speakers to subs to amp to preamps and processors. My sense from working on and rebuilding Carver equipment is that he is a fantastic designer/engineer (very much alive and still making amps to sell on ebay), who also wanted to make big profits and so would cheap-out on components to reduce manufacturing costs (or maybe the bean counters forced him to use inexpensive parts). This weakened the performance and reliability of many of the products he commercialized, but the upside is that we can buy that old hardware (often not working), spend a few hours replacing parts strategically (the Pacom caps in the Sunfire amps is a great example - and there are so many of them!) and end up with a great sounding resto-mod piece of gear. On the Phase Linear 400: great project amp, sounds fantastic when working (I managed to kill mine while trying to add a speaker protection relay - they are notorious for damaging speakers with DC when they fail... will resuscitate it eventually) and can hold its own against modern budget amps. And yes, the PL400 looks great with blue LEDs illuminating the extra large meters, Macintosh-style.

I had a Phase Linear addiction for years, which was replaced by a McIntosh addiction which was replaced by a Citation addiction which was replaced by Krell addiction etc.

I liked the sound of Phase Linear amps. The 400, 700B and especially the Dual 500.  If you needed clean power they were hard to beat. 

I wonder how how many of these negative mid fi comments would apply if the 400 had a levinson, or McIntosh logo on it?

With regard to the size of the caps used its totally meaningless. The amp had well over 200 watts per channel, and nearly 3db of headroom. It was stable as well. I drove the hell out of mine with no issues at all. 
They were widely used in the professional market as well. I've seen stacks of them in the 70's powering rock concerts.  Many high end recording studios use Phase amps, Crown was also commonly seen in these applications. 

Check  I out the absolute sounds ten best amplifiers of all time. It's on the list for good reason. It deserves to be. 

By the way, my Krell addiction has been replaced by a vintage Sansui addiction. For all those mid fi comments, you're welcome to come over for a listen anytime. 

Norman

Correction:  That TAS article was not titled, "ten BEST amplifiers of all time", but rather, 'The Ten Most SIGNIFICANT Amplifiers of All Time'.    Most contributors that included Phase Linear in their list, did so(and said so) based on the fact that they had the highest output power of their time. Carver paved the way for high output/low distortion figure, SS amps, about the same time that low-efficiency speakers(ie: Air Suspension) hit the market.  THAT'S what made them, "significant", to the audio industry.  They were great for our electronics repair and speaker reconing business, in Orlando, FL.  We(in that industry) affectionately referred to the 400 and 700 as, "Flame Linear" amps(for good reason).     They made us a LOT of money!    There are many out there that still like the old SS sound.   As long as YOU'RE enjoying your system, that's all that matters.