Life after DarTZeel

I sold my Dartzeel amp and have never looked back.

The Dartzeel lacked dynamics and bass control for me. If I ever was in the mood to crack it the Dartzeel never came through. I was also very limited on speaker choice with the Datzeel.

I since moved on to Levinson 33H and Boulder 1060. They both put a big smile on my face and do everything very well. Talk about control and power and those babies can drive any speaker.

Now the Dartzeel preamp is a different story. They hit a home run with that preamp.

The amps that came later for me are a pair of Bryston 28B I feel they are better in nearly all ways. The Dart was expensive when it retailed for $12K, then it became ridiculous

interesting.

Levinson 33H, Boulder 1060 and Bryston 28B preferred to darTZeel.

there are many paths and viewpoints to musical nirvana.....and there is no 'wrong' only different. my comment has no hidden inference.

personally; were i to venture from darTZeel it would be toward SET tubes of some sort.....not toward a more SS sound.....regardless of how much iron grip it provided. that 'grip' is just not essential to my immersion in music compared to other things.

i do own speakers where the darTZeel only needs to drive the speakers down to about 100hz as there are ICE powered woofer/subwoofers below that frequency. these 4 15" powered drivers give me all the 'iron grip' i could ask for.....and they take the signal from the dart so i get the dart magic without any dynamic limitation. even so; my room is large and the dart can energize it from 100hz on up with no problem.

OTOH later this year darTZeel will offer a 500 watt monoblock that will add that ability to easily control any loudspeaker to it's many virtues. for a price one can have their cake and eat it too.

no amp is for everyone. go wherever you find the music touches you.

what would be interesting would be how long does one own a darTZeel compared to how often owners of other amps change them. there is always a pull to try other amps. i've owned darTZeel now for almost 5 years. in the previous 7 years i owned 5 different amps.

maybe it is a matter of one's viewpoint on music.

just like being married (and one's definition of happyness). i still look at pretty women out there (it's biology) but i've been married to my wife for 35 years.

Mtdking mentions that he is pleased going from the dart to the Levinson 33H. I brought the Dartzeel to a customers home and compared it directly to his 33H's on his Sonus Faber Strads. The dart was superior in every way and the improvements were not subtle. My customer moved to the dart combo and has been thrilled ever since. Funny how peoples opinions differ greatly.
Disclosure
Dartzeel dealer

Dartzeel dealer,
On SF strads I might prefer the Dartzeel. Having owned the SF Levinson is about the worse combo you could come up with. On my Avalon Diamonds the 33H and Boulder worked out much better. The Avalon is a harder speaker to drive and it's sound 100% different then the Strads. Peoples opinions do differ greatly but that is exactly what poster has asked for is an opinion so I gave mine.

The other reason I sold it is, I had a product that broke last year that wasn't made in the USA and it took 4 months to get it fixed. I'm not saying Dartzeel would be the same case but I wasn't going to find out. I will not deal with that again so I only by US products plus it helps support my country in these crappy times. I also worry about companies like Dartzeel ability to stay in this business with such a limited product line and such high prices and we all know about the economy. $25,000 for a 100 watt stereo solid state amp that weight 65 pounds is hard to justify even if it sounds out of this world and it hates 4 ohm loads. You will see 20% of high end companies go out of business in the next 2 years. You will hear "business has never been better we are not going anywhere" then the next day a sign on the door.