Have owned the Silver 88’s for the past 5 years. I have a friend who had them previous to my purchase and still does. There is an issue with two of the electrolytics that I was fore warned by my friend, not if but when they would fail. Well finally 3 years in they failed. Mike Sanders mailed a replacement set which I replaced. Mike offered a long term fix to this problem if I would send the amps to him. Luckily for me, this was remedied by my friend who with Mike’s blessing did a final fix, improvement in the power delivery was significant, an added benefit and surprise! So it was more than just a "fix".
So as to the amps overall performance; I’ve owned ARC, Berning, CJ, Trancendent, and McIntosh tube gear and am familiar with many other esoteric/boutique amps both tube and SS. I’ve listened to the 88s for the past 5 years in my current set-up with the latest 3a DeCapo speakers. "For the money" in the right set-up one can expect reference performance well beyond what you might expect at the price. Also of importance, to me at least, point to point wiring which means long term reliability and flexibility. These are great amps and depending on the speaker might be well worthy of consideration. Amazing resolution about as good as you might ever expect, certainly that is my impression. I can’t say enough about these amps at this price point. Beyond my above comments, all amps are system dependent with a given speaker in a given system so the usual cavaets. Do your homework.
