Good starter amp recommendation
camradal Get a Schiit Vidar poweramp, it will drive just about anything, and mate it with a Schiit Saga preamp, or for a couple more hundred a Schiit Freya preamp. https://www.schiit.com/products/vidar For your money these are rather keepers not starter amps. And come with 15 day trial period. Cheers George |
Owned a B&K ST140 with a ModWright SWL 9.0 SE w/Apogee Centaur speakers and far from muddy and dark or too soft. Maybe it was just great Synergy or I was lucky.... not. Was using Clear Day Cables throughout at the time. Was it as good as the ARC 100.2 that replaced it? Nope, but I only paid $150 dollars for it and the ARC was nearly 8X’s the price. ARC 100.2 is another dang good amp too, regardless of age. |
I always loved the early ST-140. I also liked the 442. If you know how to tune up these amps they’re something special. Also for mono blocks look into the Marantz MA700 (killer sounding amp). And if I may let me tell you about another sleeper, the Luxman M-113. This Luxman is so under rated it’s crazy. I take the top off, take off the feet and put it up on Tuning Blocks and this is one sweet sounding amp. I should also add I have earlier Rotel integrated amps and Stereo amps (old transformer design), and some older Parasound, very nice amps. MG |
My comment on the B&K ST 140, was stated by me " by todays standards ". Yes, I agree, back then it was a good amplifier, and especially for the price. But not today, and this, is ime, and, imo. Sorry to have hurt some feelings here. But even back then, there were many competing amplifiers that did not sound the way I described, as this is how I remembered them sounding. I sold them, and liked the ex 442 and Pro 600. But the ST 140 was good with small bookshelf type speakers, and if anyone thought they were lucky, well, that would not be my take on it. Let me move on. |
