VAC - any comments? Good or bad.

I have owned vac renaissance 70/70,s for over 4 years,it is a solid reliable great sounding piece of equipment,currently driving quad 989,s to good effect.A friend bought some class a/b more powerfull mono blocks and suffered a few minor glitches.Kevin Hayes handling of the situation marks him as a gentleman and person to be trusted.Great product designed and built by an honorable company,pick the correct model for the job and relax.

Hi,

Just wanted to raise a couple points about the above discussion. I don't believe the standard Avatar has been redesigned, although VAC may have made some minor changes since its introduction several yrs ago. VAC has come out with an Avatar Super, which I believe retails for $6000 versus the standard Avatar's $4000 price. The Super is a complete redesign, using diff. tubes and circuits, so the standard Avatar cannot be upgraded to a Super. And, yes I am a satisfied standard Avatar owner.

I have no technical knowledge with which to comment on the disagreement expressed above. However, with one exception noted below, I've never had any major problems with my Avatar, while using w/ Spendor S3/5s and 2/3s, Reference 3A de Capos and now Living Voice Auditoriums. I have listened in the shop to several SS amps versus the Avatar, including Creek, Roksan, Sim and Marsh, and never felt the Avatar deficient compared with them. However, I will mention one potential short-coming. When I had the de Capos, even though they were a fairly efficient speaker I found that in triode (27 W) they often simply didn't have enough power with large-scale classical & rock music to produce the low frequencies with sufficient authority, and that I had to switch to ultralinear (60W). This was never a problem with jazz, blues, etc., and my LV speakers, while they have better LF response than the de Capos, are also more efficient so it is less of a problem. However, my experience suggests that the Avatar esp in triode simply may not have enough power to drive a "full-range" speaker of average or even above average efficiency, in a larger room, esp. with large-scale music. I can understand that some people would view this as a serious flaw in a $4000 amp. However, I believe the Avatar, when used in a moderately sized room, with fairly efficient and "tube friendly" speakers, and with good supporting equipment, is a very neutral sounding amp, and delivers some of the best reproduced music i've heard, esp. jazz/blues/"classic" rock, etc. Just my two cents.

TH

TH, again perhaps the unit I borrowed was somehow seriously defective. FYI, output difference between triode abd ultralinear was +1.2 dB pink. That may or may not be a hint to VAC of whether this unit's performance was outlying the norms back in May 2000. Wish I had recorded the Serial No. for their attention.... The dealer (Ensemble in Arlington, MA) went belly-up in '02 as well, so tracing it seems difficult. Believe me, there was NOTHING neutral about this unit back in 2000. Glad you're happy. And if the Avatar is such a good circuit that it merited serious attention to upgrading with the result that VAC expects the market to laud it at $6k, then I trust that they know what they're doing, and hope that I simply happened to get a bum one.
But please, don't shoot the messenger nor his methodology.
Almost every biochem, analytical chem, microbio, virology, epidemiology, etc. lab in the country uses volumetric ware calibrated by "short-cut" procedures I honed and published in the 70's and 80's (that and a buck get's me HALF a cuppa...); so if you trust that your blood test comes back with some semblance of accuracy, or the cancer research at least seems to hold SOME sense of statistical promise for your mom's lump, please give me a bit of credit for somewhat creatively differentiating lousy performance in a specific horribly non-linear amp. Sorry for the wax job.