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47 Labs GAINCARD, does it live up to the hype?

I have seen a new mystery company to me in several places, the 47 Labs squad. It seems that their Gaincard power amp with the Humpty power supply is something out of some dream magazine. My god, it seems to be smaller than the length and with of a CD case, 25W+25W per channel, micro length in the circuit path etc . . . I would like the Audiogon savants to give me a good run down on this amp. I mean, someone who owns one. Please be specific about the sound and the type of set up you have....Do these amps just work with Lowther based systems or what do you have? PAUL
bemopti123
phild
603 posts
 
By the way...with my particular set-up, I thought the amp sounded best with the Gaincard gain set to maximum. Even one notch down changed the sound for the worse. This meant that I couldn't really listen at lower levels. I'm assuming this is due to some incompatability with my Pass preamp?
jrinkerptdnet
430 posts
 
I have owned the Gaincard for about 6mos now and it never fails to impress. It is extremely detailed but also very musical. It will make the most of your best cd's and reveal all the imperfections of the worst (along with any upstream component deficiencies). I have mainly used the Gaincard with fairly efficient speakers - Ensemble Animata's, Silverline Sonatina's and (currently) the 2nd ReTHM (a compression horn design based around a Lowther DX3). The ReTHM with the G/C is stunning. The only change I would make to the G/C in this system would be to change the steps of the dual volume pots ... with the 100db + ReTHM's I rarely get past 4 or 5 of the G/C's 11 steps.
subaruguru
1,375 posts
 
Just bumped into Elliott at sound.au.com See his review/assessment of the Gaincard for another perspective.
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