Experiences, good and bad, with VTL

I never want to hear a system like that Albert, 'cause i have a feeling it would be an incredibly impossible-to-pay-for act to follow. I have a pair of lowly VTL MB185 and I'm extreamly happy with them. Last year they survived a near lightning hit, plugged directly into the wall, with only a couple of tubes and fuses to show for it. Luck or durability?? One amp had an intermittant hum that came about when it was left idling for a long period of time. Toggle the power switch on either amp or the pre and it would go away. The VTL folks tried their best to help me diagnose it over the phone...it wasn't worth sending in till it failed we figured. It hasn't re-occurred in about 6 mo so who knows what was up there since i didn't change anything. The point of all that was the amps aren't perfect but the VTL people are very helpful. Bee, the person you would probably deal with in customer support, is pretty busy and it may take a bit to get through to her. I'm on my 3rd year with the tubes and they are starting to go a bit soft. The system is on probably about 20 hrs/wk ave.

As to the first poster who recommended ARC, CJ and Mac., I don't think here has spent much time with tube amps. THe ARC may be worth a listen though i though they were the most solid statey of the bunch, VTL included. The VTL had better mids and maybe a bit softer highs than the ARC VT100 II. I also use a 5.5 pre-amp and the sound from my system is dynamic, quite open and 3-d. The bass is nicely controlled though i do wish there was more (room? speakers??{dunlavy athenas} bigger amp?) The switchable triode/tetrode on the VTL is a nice feature. I'm finding myself wanting a big triode amp more and more each day.

The CJ gear i listened to was mushy in comparison...what anti tube folks talk about i would guess. I don't remember the model numbers. I also listened to a high end Mac set up through a pair of 801 nautilus speakers. something was really not working there either...enough so that i quit looking at either of those products. I can't imagine not loving a pair of 750's. if you buy them and don't like them i'd be glad to accept them as a donation

Hi,

I own a pair of MB-100s and have been very happy with them. They power my Celestion SL700s with no problems. They have decent bass, a bit forward mid(but still very nice because my speakers are slightly too mellow) and nice upper end. For the money they are great. I have owned them for two years and have absolutely no problems with them.

Good luck with your search.

update i just put in some brimar 12AT7 black plate tubes made in 1958 they are a better than 1970's mullard box plate and about equal to but different than my telfunken right now i love em but will go back to the tele's to see if they really are better will post a follow up

Tube Research Labs is not out of business at all. I know because I am a dealer for them. So, im responding to rebut that. As a matter of fact they have just expanded to Cable Research Labs and they are making incredible leaps and bounds in that market now also. If you have any questions please feel free to call me for any more info @ 708-267-1588

I just picked myself up a pair of MB-185 Sig. mono's that are about four years old. I am the third owner, and was able to pick them up directly from the second owner, who had used them with no problems for a year. I put them in my system last weekend, and they only played for about 3 hours before they both went dead simultaneously. The weird thing is, it was the B+ fuses that I think blew, because the heater filaments still light up, but only an AC line/AC fuse event could explain them going at the same time. Since then, I've left two messages for Luke with no response, and although I've talked to Bea twice, she isn't up on the technical issues. She did tell me, however, that the B+ fuses, which are 1 amp, 250 volt, slo-blo types in my amps, are now in current production changed to 1.5 amp, 600 volt, fast-blo types. This is more in line with the fusing I've seen used on other fine tube amps. I really have a hard time understanding why, at VTL, only the company owner and president (Luke) is the one supposed to deal with customer technical support issues. He's obviously much too busy to give me kind of support I've always had available to me from Conrad-Johnson, for instance. I'm going to try to replace these fuses with 1.5 amp, 250 volt, fast-blo's for the time being, since new fuse holders are required to fit the higher voltage replacements, but I'm very curious what could have caused this to happen in the first place, and whether it will happen again. (BTW, the rest of the system works fine with my old amp, and no power line event was noticable at the time of the failure.) As for the sound, it's too early for me to have formed a real opinion, but they did seem big and powerful with good transparency, but somewhat dark and lacking in sparkle and air, and a little looser in the bass than I was expecting, but these may need fresh tubes. Anybody done the cap upgrade here?