phase linear 500 watt per chanell amp

Design finished after Carver left. Over 40 y.o.
Rots o' ruck.
No more power than a big Hypex.

Oops! That was a little "racially insensitive" now, wasn’t it Fuzztone? Anyway, you have that big McIntosh MC602, don’t you g_nakamoto?

I’ve never heard this amp, but have sat in on a few discussions of it. I am under the impression that Bob did all the design work.  The amplifier does seem to be unstable as it sits, but several mods have been done to change the wiring and grounding scheme. I believe that there are many AC and DC cables bundled together as well as grounding all over the amplifier rather than using a common grounding point which causes this amplifier to be quite noisy. Also a lot of talk about poor capacitors used, so any amp not updated would need some work.
Good luck, Tim

I lived with one of those. It was amazing... ground breaking for 1978 (?)... but unrefined and noisy by today’s standards. it’s been a long time, but I doubt it sounds better now. .

For most of my time as an audiophile Carver was out there doing wild and crazy stuff... like his tiny cube. But for much of this time it was unique but there was some flaw that didn’t put it in the high end... noise or high frequency hash.

Great amp in its day however its ancient history now.

@roxy54, yes, i still have my mc602! one meter light went out but it's too heavy to take it to the shop to have a bulb replaced! LOL!

That Mac is a great amp...I would love to own one. 

I love the D-500 amp, good amp, 1/2 the weight. Think it was designed by A.P. VanMeter who once worked for McIntosh. I know for a fact that the 300 series 2 was designed by AP. You should get your Mac serviced, pay someone to take it to a reputable shop. The Mac is better in my opinion!

The Phase Linear Dual-500 was the initial design of Bob Carver, finished up by A.P. Van Meter formerly of McIntosh and University after Bob had left the company to found Carver corp.

Ran Phase Linear 700's &300's back in the 80's for sound reinforcement and a few club disco installs - always wanted a Dual-500.  Found one on eBay about 10 years ago in need of some TLC, so I sent it over the Les at Fort Worth Audio for restoration.

It drives subwoofers, a pair of JBL MD-7's loaded with JBL 2245 18's in a 4-way quad amped vintage system.  Ashly NE4800 system controller - that part of the system is state of the art today.

Runs cool and doesn't break a sweat hammering my den, sound is very tight, lots of headroom.  When Les was finished with it, I picked it up and having pondered the need for a subwoofer amp with over $2K in seemed a bit excessive, so I decided to list it on eBay.  Had the boxes ready and sale information drafted up on eBay - hooked it up for a shake down test run.

After about 2 hours listening to it, I shut the system down and called Les, it was a Saturday afternoon and told him I had changed my mind and was keeping the amp - he just laughed and said he knew once I listened to it that I would keep it.

That amp will be in my estate sale.

Noisy , headache inducing garbage but ok in it’s day. 

@quadprod - great story!

@roxy54,my son had one also. he bought his from audio classics back in 2011 or so. he paid 7k for it. he sold his for 4.5 k!

Be careful with phase linear amplifiers because they will develop noise or noises in one channel and when they do you have to get rid of them because of a design flaw that will cause the amp to become unstable and it will take your whole setup out including itself because it has no real protection inside except for a main fuse. Be forewarned.

They were great for Clair Brothers live systems in 1974.

Flame Linear, Fizzle Linear, blown Fuse Linear....according to Peter Moncrief, the 400 was G-D’Souza gift to audio.  Back then I was an Ampzilla man.  

Darn that auto correct and my Jewish upbringing!  God’s gift.

Sold them back in the day.  They break.  A lot.

Cheers!

Good clean power for about $1 per Watt! The series 1 amps were not that reliable, but series 2 was MUCH improved. I had a lot of Phase Linear stuff. Five 300 series 2 amps, none failed in 42 years of hard service! Even my 700 series 2 with all NEC outputs never failed!

I just want to comment on nakamotos 602.  Nice amp! I have an MC 500 gold edition that I love!  

Little late, but here's a mod/rebuild service for the PL-400.

Not familiar with them myself.

https://www.worldproaudio.com/WPA-Phase-Linear-400-mod1

I used a 400 to power stacked Advents in the mid 70's and it worked/sounded fine.

However, I tried it powering Altec VOTT's (24+ hour party) around the same time period and it would shut down after an hour, so.

We ended up using one of my Dynaco ST70's for the rest of the party without a hitch.

The PL worked fine the next week powering a pair of large Infinity speakers that the ST70's would not properly power.

The preamp used with both amps was a Dynaco PAS3X, which may have caused the PL problem (though it was the same preamp used with the double Advents.

Go figure.

DeKay

i had a phase linear 400 back in the days. it was the most watts for the money! that's all!!

Phase Linear 500 is an awesome amp. But, needs to be gone through because of age.

Better option is the WOPL 700...

You can get a new QSC GX3 (part of their least costly line...A/B power grunt for days, XLR, TRS balanced, and RCA single ended inputs, Speakon and binding post speaker outs, built-in sub crossover) for a couple hundred bucks that is far better performing and sounding than any 70’s power amp. Magico uses one (not sure why, I simply saw one in a factory tour video). Bought mine new a while back for 200 bucks on sale at Guitar Center.

@roxy544 and fuzztone2,i just noticed the 'racist' remark that fuzztone made to me! chinese talk like that! i'm japanese and we don't talk like that! you can say that we all look alike but your comment shows how low down you are! that's ok! there will allways be 'racist' in this world!!!

Hi Mr. Nakamoto,
I was wondering if you got that. I'm sure he was only joking and didn't mean to hurt your feelings, but I was ribbing him for it because it wasn't appropriate or kind.

Owned a couple TFM amps back when.....

good stuff, powered speakers w authority!!

No complaints!
Sunfire 300 on loan for several,weeks, for a broke down Rotel rib-1090. Loved the carver Sunfire 300!
Found a b-stock signature 600. One of the best amps I’ve owned!



Awwwww,... did he hurt ur feelings?
 BS!  Jam tunes n don’t worry!

 We have eagle skin, no crap words hurt us! Fuh get bout it !!

 Cheers n beers.

What say you fuzztone2?