How does the Phase Linear 400 compare?

Sean: The quote was taken from the original hard copy magazine The Stereophile, Winter (4), 1973/74, pages 9 and 10. The quote represents the entire review, except for the title, power rating, price, and manufacturer's address. The price was $499. The Dyna 400, which was reviewed on page 11, had a price of $449 in kit form and $599 ready-built. Back then, $100 made for a different price class for JGH -- Whew! I hardly remember it myself. I was looking through my back issues because something I read on Audiogon about Wilson speakers reminded me about the Fulton J Modulars, which are also reviewed in this issue. I stumbled across the PL 400 review and remembered seeing this thread a few days ago.

Thanks for the follow-up James. Just goes to show how much things have changes since then, both in audio and the economy. While JGH thought that $100 was enough to separate one item from another in terms of the price category of a component, we wouldn't think twice about dumping $100 for a piece of wire nowadays. Makes me want to second guess a lot of the decisions that i've made if you know what i mean.... Sean
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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.