The CJ Premiere 12 was the best vintage tube amplifier ever.

I'm comfortable in saying that the lack of argument has proven this point absolutely true.  May the fans of 1980s and 1990s ARC amps see the error of their ways.

I had the Premier 8A, and can concur with Erik on this. The 12’s were essentially a lower power (half the output tubes) 8A. I would think the 12’s would be at least as good or better given the speaker isn’t too power hungry. When I see this teflon upgrade, I can’t help but think don’t mess with that amp. That said, I’ve yet to hear one so there’s that. I should ad the Premiers don’t have a tight, detailed. articulate bass, but what they do well is pretty darned special.

Best (insert just about anything here) = how long is a ball of string?

100 %...just agree that these are really good amps. I didn't make that very clear (-:

I find this hard to believe. The Harmon Kardon Citation 2 had/has wider bandwidth and lower distortion (by half). Of course it dates from 1959-1960 so is a good 30 years older, but if properly refurbished with new filter capacitors in the power supplies and good coupling capacitors it can put a lot of modern amplifiers to shame. The output transformers have bandwidth to 100KHz. It is certainly one of the better amps from the golden age of hifi. I like it more than any of the vintage Marantz amps, but of course any conversation like this is relying heavily on opinion; saying something is 'best' is always a difficult position, especially when it comes to audio!