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

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!

@atmasphere

I was deliberately trolling you to come and chime in. :)

Best,

E

Truthfully I’ve never even seen an HK tube amp in person, so I have no opinion on the sound quality.

I’m curious if anyone has ever compared the sound of a CJ Premiere 12 to an HK citation though?

I am sure Ralph / @atmasphere is right about the measurements, but did it sound better??