How does the Phase Linear 400 compare?

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.

I had a Phase Linear addiction for years, which was replaced by a McIntosh addiction which was replaced by a Citation addiction which was replaced by Krell addiction etc.

I liked the sound of Phase Linear amps. The 400, 700B and especially the Dual 500.  If you needed clean power they were hard to beat. 

I wonder how how many of these negative mid fi comments would apply if the 400 had a levinson, or McIntosh logo on it?

With regard to the size of the caps used its totally meaningless. The amp had well over 200 watts per channel, and nearly 3db of headroom. It was stable as well. I drove the hell out of mine with no issues at all. 
They were widely used in the professional market as well. I've seen stacks of them in the 70's powering rock concerts.  Many high end recording studios use Phase amps, Crown was also commonly seen in these applications. 

Check  I out the absolute sounds ten best amplifiers of all time. It's on the list for good reason. It deserves to be. 

By the way, my Krell addiction has been replaced by a vintage Sansui addiction. For all those mid fi comments, you're welcome to come over for a listen anytime. 

Norman

Correction:  That TAS article was not titled, "ten BEST amplifiers of all time", but rather, 'The Ten Most SIGNIFICANT Amplifiers of All Time'.    Most contributors that included Phase Linear in their list, did so(and said so) based on the fact that they had the highest output power of their time. Carver paved the way for high output/low distortion figure, SS amps, about the same time that low-efficiency speakers(ie: Air Suspension) hit the market.  THAT'S what made them, "significant", to the audio industry.  They were great for our electronics repair and speaker reconing business, in Orlando, FL.  We(in that industry) affectionately referred to the 400 and 700 as, "Flame Linear" amps(for good reason).     They made us a LOT of money!    There are many out there that still like the old SS sound.   As long as YOU'RE enjoying your system, that's all that matters.

Was great 40 yrs ago not so much now.

Dinosaurs like the PL400 and 700 are fun to look at and (for some) to reminisce about, but sonically they cannot hold a candle to a $50 TPA3250 from our day. 

They can, however, deliver more slam but it'll be painful to experience and you'd have to find one that's still working.  A fool's errand imho.