VAC - any comments? Good or bad.

I too expected only good things from my first use of a VAC amp, and lugged home a well-broken in VAC Avatar a few years ago. The long story is somewhere else posted. Suffice it to say that it's horrendously high output impedence wreaked havoc with my newly-aquired Parsifal Encores (which are VERY easy to drive, btw), with disturbances as much as
+/- 5dB across the spectrum, as finally carefully measured
against two reference amps. Horribly overripe mid-bass, a giant low treble peak and no upper treble "air" made all discs unlistenable. I faxed curves to VAC and was finally told that the inexpensive AVATAR's output tubes were famous for nonlinearity and unpredictable results with real speakers, and that if I wanted really fine performance I had to get their bigger amps. Sad to say the Audio Refinement Complete ($995) I had on hand absolutely trounced
the $3800 Avatar in both triode and pentode modes.
I then came to look as Stereophiles "predicted plot" of real performance with an 8 ohm load with glass amps once in awhile in JA's reviews, but NEVER saw one with swings of the amplitude I measured (and many of us heard) through that Avatar. And yes, both channels were the same, the tubes were ok, power output was correct, etc.
Glad their higher end stuff is more linear, and that they've recently completely redesigned the 'tar.

I have had nothing but wonderful experinces with VAC. I can't imagine what this prior post is all about. What kind of measurements were they taking, and with what gear? Is this just proof that there is always someone????
Ten posts, now eleven, and, one crucifixion. Sounds about right; everyone loves VAC and Kevin then the expert steps up to the plate and just lays his product to waste. Strange, and not my experience. Except for that time that when my Radio Shack $99. receiver sounded better than the London Philharmonic...live!

Just a word I'm a happy Avatar owner...I purchased it used with Svetlana EL-34's as the output tubes. I'm running a pair of Green Mtn. Europa's which are tube friendly given their fairly flat impedance curve. Sounds great to me! Mid-range timbre and harmonic structure is right on, great upper end detail with no hardness. Bass is as one might expect from a monitor. If it's an indication of VAC products I wouldn't hesitate to purchase their other offerings.

Ease up on Subaruguru, guys. He's jut reporting his personal experience with product, not making a blanket indictment of the brand.

Exactly! VAC's techie admitted that the EL-34 in the original AVATAR was quite unruly, though with the relatively benign imp curve of the Parsifal Encore I expected better linearity. As I remember the deviation:
Down a couple dB in lower bass, climbing to flat at about 60Hz, continuing to climb to maybe +3dB at 100, falling to a big trough at 250-400 or so, then climbing steeply to a BIG peak of about +5dB at 4k, then dropping ike a stone to -10k at 20k. Can you say screechy horns and bloated bass?
Whereas the three ss amps (NAD, Audio Refinement Complete, Aleph P+ 2s) agreed within +/- 0.25dB (meter/eyesight noise). Again, this is NOT a blanket disparagement of all VAC products. And although I know nothing of the new version of the Avatar, is it possible that they're using a more linear, predictable output stage with a much lower output impedence? Anybody know? I really felt badly for Julien Pelchat on the other end of the line in in Quebec when I told him what this amp was doing to his careful crossover work! Why bother to sweat driver matching and all that crossover research your design rests at the whim of unruly whipsawing? After I returned the AVATAR tyo the Pass/VAC/Verity/etc dealer he DID admit that it sounded different from all other amps. Phew....