Opinions on Adcom 5802 and 5500 amps

Many of the people who post here on A-gon have owned Adcom amps at one time or another. I've owned 5 different Adcom power amps since the late 1980's, including the 5500/5503, but I have not owned the 5802. I also sold Adcom products in the early 1990's (which was prior to the production of the 5802).

Personally speaking, I think that Adcom products offer good sound quality and very good value. The amps tend to have a "family" sound, mostly due to similar circuit design, the use of MOSFET transistors, and similar chassis construction techniques. The larger amps are on the somewhat warm side, but still fairly revealing with very good mid-range, decent imaging and transient response, and very good bass control. The one area of the frequency response where the Adcoms may tend to sound a bit "soft" (to my ear) is in the high frequencies (above 10kHz).

For many years, when their products were being made in Taiwan, Adcom had excellent parts and quality control. They still have high quality parts -- some are actually MIL-SPEC -- but there have been some QC issues during the past several years since they switched their manufacturing to China.

While I have not had direct experience with the 5802 amp, I have listened to one owned by a friend, and I think it is a very good amp. If you can buy a used one, it is also an excellent value. The only "negatives" I can offer about the 5802 are: size (it's quite tall), and heat output (it tends to run quite hot due to class-A biasing). Therefore, you need to be sure that you have adequate space and ventilation for this amp.

Hope this helps.

Sdcambell makes a good point about the softeness of the Adcom amps but depending on the rest of your rig you may feel that this isn't a problem.I sold Adcom for 6 years and found the 5802 to be a great bargain and different,way ahead of the rest of their product.They were designed by nelson Pass of Threshold fame and in a cost to performance ratio kicked butt on many other lines.They tended to be very warm though I resist calling them tube like as many others have.But you may not neeed this much power.I thought they worked great for say Maggie owners who needed high current.They worked great with the matching GFP-750 pre-amp as both were balanced.Together with a good set of XLR interconnect chosen to compliment the rest of the rig it was a hard combo to beat for those with power hungry speakers in a bigger room.The only complaint I had was in terms of build quality though this was more of an issue with the pre-amp than the power amp.It's a big company and my guess was that the reliablity issue came with the number of units sold.But I think that for $1250 or abouts used with a 750 pre for $750 or thereabouts it's worth a try.I would defintely take the 5802 over the 5500 in terms of extra power and sound quality.

I currently own a 5802 and have had the oportunity to compare it against the Marsh AS400 and Cinepro3KII. I have found it to be a solid performer worth its price. The Marsh had a more halographic presentation, but the Adcom rendered the sound of piano and saxaphone better. In comparison to the Cinepro, the Cinepro seems to have a touch more clarity. I have sent the Adcom to Musical Concepts to be modified, and should have it back in about 3 weeks. If you pick up one used for about $900, then add about $900 to have it modified, then for $1800 I feel you have an amp that is still a great value.