VTL Service ??

Well, Hakan, where you are in Sweden, you would presumably be dependent upon the local distributor anyway, not an American company such as VTL itself, so don't let this disuade you from checking out the reputation that disributor might have in your country if you really like the amps. As for the rest of your post, it just makes me glad I didn't grow up in the shadow of the Soviet Union! You are right about the market forces and the internet thing, though, and I reminded Luke Manley of this in my correspondence to him - not that it helped. In fact, I invited him to search for this and other similar threads on Audiogon, and I hope he does. I still think he makes fine amplifiers, and for the money too, but I definitely have encountered more helpful service elsewhere.

I was the second owner of a used vtl Stereo 50/50. It was a great sounding amp but shortly after I bought it it developed a popping noise.When the unit was built it came with a "lifetime transferable warranty".When I spoke to Luke Manley he informed me that vtl no longer honored that warranty. Naturally I was disappointed that they would not stand behind their "warranty",but sent he unit out to have the input caps replaced($200). When I got the amp back it sounded great but within 2 months I had a bad resistor(which I replaced )and then only weeks after that the right output transformer failed. Bea Lam at vtl was very pleasant to deal with, but the fact that they would not stand behind the original warranty caused me to buy a McIntosh amp and preamp. The irony is that when I was trying to get them to honor their word I was auditioning a vtl 2.5 pre and ST85 amp,and their reluctance to do so cost them a customer for life.

I've gotten my MB-185's running with new tubes and higher-rated B+ fuses (now standard on the amp), and have experience no further operational problems. Luke finally talked to me by phone, after deciding that my emails were too long! He was still of very little help, though. "Send them to us" is all VTL will comment, basically. They still refuse to assist me in restoring the missing switches, and seem annoyed that I bought my tubes elsewhere. Frankly, they probably would have already gotten my business on a coupling cap upgrade, if they weren't so guarded and unhelpful about my need to continue auditioning the amps *before* deciding to invest big $ in cartons, shipping costs, time out of the system, etc., not to mention the repairs and parts. I wouldn't want to do an upgrade if I decided to sell the amps, but I would want to do the switch restoration - but at a reasonable cost, which means locally! VTL, however, is emphatically not sympathetic to this logical position, something I will remember before recommending their products to anyone else.

This is a very sobering thread! I was just considering buying used MB-450 monoblocs (again) when I found this topic.

My experience with VTL is a bit mixed: I own a TL 2.5 pre-amp that I bought used a couple of years ago, & absolutely love. No problems, knock on wood.

I also owned a (used) early model ST-85 power amp for a couple of years. It was a bit noisy, & had some old weird funky connectors, but still, had it's charms. It finally blew a fuse which I couldn't get locally because it was an odd one. VTL (Bea), sent me new fuses before I paid for them, relying on me to send them a check later, & gave me plenty of advice over the phone.

Bea, (Luke's wife I believe), has been extremely helpful by phone & e-mail. However, they have chastised me occasionally for not buying their gear new. The thought of shipping VTL mono-blocs to California really puts me off.......I have just read too many accounts of either their outright failure, or some "funky", intermittant, quirks. Maybe if I lived in California. The pre-amps are great however, IMHO, & easy to ship if need be. Just my 2 cents.

Hi Steve: Just let me add that I haven't had any issues with the reliability of the MB-185 Sig's themselves, just the now-replaced and amperage-uprated fuses (which are uprated for better performance [amperage-wise] and protection [voltage-wise, which I don't have yet] on current production), and the switch removal business, which I knew about when I bought them. Oh - and they sound pretty darn good, too.