Opinions on VTL preamps

Just blew up the classe guess its the 5.5.

Found the problem, we had my listening chair delivered on friday. And My wife said they unpluged one of the speakers by accident, when I put it back i connected the neg to pos.So nothing wrong with the 5.5 ,classe or st150.still a little buzz for a couple seconds on the monos though,But once they are warmed up the sound great.

My impression of VTL is, they are EXTREMELY helpful by phone when something goes wrong, even if you bought it used & out of warrenty. But then, I've never had to send something in to them for out-of-warrenty repair work. I think a more important question here might be: how does VTL reliability & service compare with other tube mfg's--ARC, CJ, etc? Personally, I've started to calculate the shipping distance to the factory before buying any used gear......just my 2 cents.

Chayes...just swapping your positive and negative speaker inputs isn't gonna cause the problems your talking about, it wont cause ANY problem just polarity issues.
either you left something out or I misread it

no problems in last six months.It will make horrible noises if i forget to turn the rest of the system on before the amps.may be they where loaded up or something.they work fine now and keep getting better.I figured it was the speakers polarity.Its very dark in my listening room,ecept for the glow from all the tubes.